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, hosts a series of webinars in which researchers discuss their projects. Future webinars are free to attend, and past webinars are available to view.
There’s an abundance of research on the effects of distraction on highway safety, making it challenging to maintain proper context with past findings. New work is broadening our understanding of distraction by examining questions such as why drivers feel so compelled to engage in distracting activities behind the wheel and how the effects of distraction vary by age and other factors. This webinar will help you understand how to accurately interpret research results and explore the latest science of distracted driving.
The goal of Driving Healthy is to provide commercial motor vehicle drivers with health and wellness information targeted towards the unique needs of CMV drivers. Driving Healthy encourages visitors to explore the information within the Driving Healthy website, to interact with others on their Facebook and Twitter pages, and to 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.
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. The Tips for Sharing the Road with Commercial Motor Vehicles 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.
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.