ANN ARBOR, Mich. (November 9, 2021) – The pursuit of safe mobility involves a continuous flow of novel ideas and breakthrough innovations to help reduce the number of traffic fatalities. Toyota created the Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) in 2011 to advance safety for the industry as a whole through open partnerships with universities, hospitals and other institutions. Today, the pioneering research center announced plans for its next phase of automotive safety projects, backed by a five-year, $30 million commitment.

“Humans are at the center of Toyota’s technology development strategy, so we are designing our new safety research in pursuit of ‘Safety for All,’” said Dr. Danil Prokhorov, director of Toyota’s Future Research Department (FRD) and CSRC. “As part of this, our projects will explore the diversity of safety needs and analyze safe mobility options that accommodate different applications, physical characteristics and levels of accessibility for people and society.”

Over the last 10 years, CSRC has received $85 million to help make the roads a safer place for everyone. Projects have ranged from foundational research into the factors that lead to distracted driving to development of tools and testing procedures related to the efficacy of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Throughout its history, CSRC has partnered with leading institutions and experts from organizations such as the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan, among many others.

CSRC has identified three new research tracks to guide its work over the next five years. This will ensure its work evolves to address the emerging challenges of the changing mobility ecosystem. The three interrelated tracks weave together the diverse interdisciplinary backgrounds of CSRC’s team, emphasizing agility, shorter project lengths and more rapid results. As it has in the past, CSRC will continue to seek out partnerships to address safety issues facing at-risk and vulnerable populations.

New CSRC Research Tracks

• Human-Centric: Helping everyone understand, benefit from and interact with the mobility technologies of today and tomorrow. Example areas include new technology training and customer health and wellness.
• Safety Assurance: Enhancing the safe operation of future mobility technologies, especially automated driving systems, by studying the traffic environment, human drivers and possible safety hazards. Example areas include deeper understanding of interactions between road users as well as driver engagement in automation.
• Assessment: Empowering the decisions of individual customers and industry stakeholders by identifying quantitative mobility safety measures. Example areas include new crash protection measures and repeatable test scenarios for new driver assistance and automated features.

Since its inception, CSRC has completed 85 research projects with more than 25 different institutions, published over 260 research papers and engaged more than 300 researchers who have publicly shared the output globally.