Toyota opens new "Collaborative Safety Research Center" in Ann Arbour, Michigan

The center will work on projects of wide security industry primarily targeting children, adolescents and the elderly in collaboration with major U.S. institutions

Toyota announced today the opening of a new research center on the Advanced Security who work with large North-American institutions, including the universities, hospitals, research institutions, the federal agencies and other organizations on projects aimed at reducing the number of dead and wounded on American roads.

The new Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) Toyota will be installed at the Toyota Technical Center (TTC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan and will host researchers and engineers of Toyota North America and Japan. This new initiative reinforces Toyota's commitment vis-a-vis security and leadership in terms of quality. The company has planned to spend about $ 50 million to finance the CSRC over the next five years.

Collaborative research will explore integrated to improve safety at the cockpit and the road environment means. Initially, the target areas will be the reduction of sources of distraction - a cause of accidents more frequent - and the protection of the most vulnerable road users, particularly children, adolescents and the elderly. These categories representing approximately 30% of road deaths in the United States.

The CSRC also conduct extensive knowledge of available data on accidents and analyzes human behavior to support the efforts of stakeholders to assess and accelerate the deployment of active safety systems.

Announcing this new initiative in matters of security, the president of Toyota Motor Corporation President Akio Toyoda, said: "The new research center on the safety of Toyota collaborate with leading North American universities as well as various partners on safety projects beneficial for the entire industry. Our investment will support collaborative research aimed at reducing distractions while driving and improve the safety of vehicles, drivers, passengers and pedestrians. "

Chuck Gulash, principal engineer at the Toyota Technical Center, was appointed director of the CSRC. He will report to Shigeki Terashi, Director of Toyota Motor Corporation and President of TTC.

"Toyota has always tried to take a full gait to create a safe and sustainable automotive grace company has advanced security technologies, has intelligent transport systems and the education of users in road safety," said stated Mr. Gulash. "We have a long history of close collaboration with our partners North Americans to realize our security objectives, and our new collaborative research initiative will build on this tradition. We intend to publish most of our work to be accessible to federal agencies, to industry and academia. "

Charter partners: University of Michigan, Virginia Tech, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

The University of Michigan, Virginia Tech and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute will be our charter partners in the new Collaborative Safety Research Center. Toyota also send to other universities, hospitals and research institutions in North America to solicit ideas for research in the field of Advanced automotive safety.

Toyota finance at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) on a multidisciplinary project to assess the potential benefits of security systems advances systematic way, combining their expertise in matters of driving behavior, analysis of data recorded during collisions and modeling of Conduct.

"The UM Transportation Research Institute share Toyota's enthusiasm for maximizing the benefits of cutting-edge research in matters of safety for the company, and we take advantage of this generous funding for a contribution to our research laboratories and our bases data, "stated the director of UMTRI Peter Sweatman. "This program will enable top researchers in the field of security to collaborate on complex issues regarding the main elements of the equation of automotive safety - ie drivers and passengers who are also members of our family, our friends and our colleagues. Thanks to the continued support of Toyota, we will be able to realize the testing and further disseminate the results of our work, but also to accelerate the pace of improvements. "

Toyota collaboration with Virginia Tech focuses on the development and refinement of a guidance system and electronic surveillance for teenage drivers who have just obtained their license in order to help reduce behavior dangerous driving. Toyota will play an active role in the realization of this project "Driver Coach" to ratings of several partners, including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health.

"Given that new teen drivers are three times more likely to have a fatal accident than adult drivers road, the participation of our Toyota project" Driver Coach "paramount importance", stated Professor Tom Dingus, director of Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, and inventor of the system "Driver Coach". In our previous work after the conduct of adolescents, we can determine from now, thanks to the video recordings, the behavior of young drivers behind the wheel. The next step is to educate teens and their parents focusing on risk behaviors and safe driving behavior, the ultimate goal being to help teenagers become better drivers. "

Toyota also participate in a pilot project with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute in order to create the first national surveillance system of road accidents dedicated young occupants of vehicles. This system is used to track trends in matters of child passenger safety and evaluating the performance of new technologies safety for children; it will also serve as a national resource available to researchers, industry and policy makers to define the priorities for the safety of children passengers in the United States.

"Toyota's support is essential to enable us to continue our efforts to measure more broadly and more accurately the consequences of road accidents on the health and well-being of children at the national level," stated Dennis Durbin , MD, MSCE, co-director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children's Hospital.

Toyota Technical Center (TTC), a division of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, North America, is the entity of research and development of Toyota in North America. TTC handles of engineering design, development of vehicles, Evaluation of safety and performance of vehicles, of Regulatory Affairs and Advanced Technical Research for Toyota and Lexus factories and sold in North America vehicles. The TTC has developed the vehicles Avalon, Camry, Sienna, Solara, Tundra and Venza for the North American market. For more information, visit www.toyota.ca.