Individuals, families, and groups are invited once a year to come and take a tour of the Virginia Smart Roads and to learn about VTTI research.
The VTTI and VDOT School Day is for students from first grade through college. Every student will have a chance to see the Virginia Smart Roads and other VTTI facilities.
Safe-D, a university transportation center led by VTTI, hosted a series of webinars in which researchers discussed their projects. Past webinars are available to view.
Car drivers have been found to be at fault in over three-quarters of crashes and near-crashes involving heavy vehicles. This may be indicative of inadequacies in driver education and training programs related to safely sharing the road with heavy vehicles. Sharing the Road with Trucks website was designed to cover five key sharing-the-road scenarios using video clips of real-world driving events captured during one of VTTI's naturalistic driving studies. The website includes video clips of driving, simulator screenshots, scenario descriptions, short tips and facts, and photographs of actual crashes between cars and heavy vehicles to convey the importance of proper road-sharing behavior. Although the website is aimed at new drivers, all drivers can benefit from reviewing the material and scenarios to ensure that they are sharing the road properly every time they get behind the wheel.
The goal of Highway Heroes is to provide the trucking community with free resources to educate and increase awareness of human trafficking. The website aims to empower the trucking community and the general public to identify and report potential trafficking situations.
The goal of Trucking Along is to provide commercial motor vehicle drivers with health and wellness information targeted towards the unique needs of CMV drivers. Trucking Along encourages visitors to explore the information within the website and share CMV-specific health-related information with others.
When it comes to commercial trucking, education can play a significant role in the safety and well-being of commercial drivers and the public with whom they share the roads. Researchers at VTTI have come together to provide industry professionals — risk managers, safety directors, dispatchers, and their insurance agents — with the information they need to develop strategies for a safer, more productive workforce. On the Commercial Motor Vehicle Driving Safety website, you will find six interactive modules prepared by VTTI research scientists who specialize in the trucking industry. Each module includes a discussion of safety issues, and tools to help develop practical solutions.
Housed on the website of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Commercial Motor Vehicle CMV Driving Tips website was developed to educate CMV drivers and fleet managers about common driving errors and provide valuable driving tips through the Internet. The driving tips, ideas, and suggestions outlined on the website are supported with real-world driving video clips that exemplify errors. The truck videos shown on the website were collected during real-world (open-roadway) driving studies conducted by VTTI. As a training exercise, the examples on the website are followed by sets of questions aimed to spark thoughtful introspection regarding the behaviors shown in the videos.
VTTI researchers have created a presentation for Virginia judges to use during the licensing ceremony that all teens and parents in Virginia must attend for teens to receive their license. The goal is to provide information about the greatest driving risks for teens and what countermeasures have been shown to reduce risk.
VTTI researchers developed a parent/teen driving agreement as part of the Ford Driving Skills for Life program. This agreement is adapted from the Checkpoints Program developed by Bruce Simons-Morton at the National Institute of Child Health Development. Consider using this agreement when your teen starts to drive independently.