The National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (NSTSCE)

About NSTSCE

The National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (NSTSCE) develops and disseminates advanced transportation safety techniques and innovations. The Center's mission is to use state-of-the-art facilities, including the Virginia Smart Road, to conduct the necessary research to improve driver safety in both rural and urban communities. NSTSCE's strategic goals are to improve safety using an integrated and dynamic approach to the following:

• Developing and evaluating new devices and techniques for enhancing driver performance.
• Identifying age-related deficiencies in driving performance and developing methods to mitigate the associated risks.
• Understanding the role fatigue plays in crashes and developing and evaluating countermeasures to reduce fatigue-related traffic incidents.
• Improving the nighttime roadway visual environment through the assessment of behavior, establishment of visibility needs, and control of adverse lighting effects.
• Developing a greater understanding of driver decision making and performance in normal driving through imminent crash situations in various driving environments.
• Developing next-generation tools and techniques for mining large naturalistic datasets to identify specific driver behaviors, critical incidents, and infrastructure-related information.

About the Director

Since 1996, Tom Dingus has managed the operations and research at VTTI. This multi-disciplinary organization conducts $12 million annually in sponsored research. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Tom Dingus was founding director of the National Center for Transportation Technology at the University of Idaho and was an associate director of the Center for Computer-Aided Design at the University of Iowa.

Dingus has served as Principal Investigator on many programs and projects and has conducted transportation safety and human factors research since 1984. Projects have included the safety and usability of advanced in-vehicle devices, the development of crash avoidance technology, large-scale studies of driver behavior and performance, studies of truck driver fatigue, and driver distraction and attention research.

Current Work

View published reports online

The National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence is conducting research on the following topics:

• Assessment of safety devices and techniques that enhance driver performance.
• Examination of advanced roadway delineation and lighting systems.
• Development of techniques to address age-related driver issues.
• Development of techniques to address fatigued driver issues.