The SEAS Transportation Safety Program

In the area of transportation safety, SEAS operates the Center for Intelligent Systems Research (CISR) and the National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC), which is a collaborative effort among the Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and The George Washington University.

Highway Safety and Infrastructure Research Group

The Highway Safety and Infrastructure Research Group at the NCAC studies roadside hardware and highway infrastructure, looking at the placement of cable median barriers, the design of portable concrete barrier connections, height tolerances for guardrails, the design of breakaway sign supports, and other topics.

The approach begins with extensive computer simulations to identify the particular problem. "Once we identify the problem, we select one or two critical cases and run crash tests," says Professor Dhafer Marzougui. "The tests are well-documented using high-speed digital cameras, and accelerometers, gyros, and other sensors that obtain the vehicle response and measure its speed.  We perform the computer analysis and tests and develop retrofits and recommendations or guidelines for the Federal Highway Administration. These guidelines can be implemented to improve the safety of the barrier and reduce the risk of injuries and fatalities." Over the years, the Highway Safety and Infrastructure Research Group has developed unmatched expertise in its research.

Vehicle Safety and Biomechanics Research Group

The Vehicle Safety and Biomechanics Research Group focuses primarily on understanding injury risk by analyzing and solving complex problems associated with pre-crash, crash, and post-crash events. The research group has formed several partnerships, including providing engineering analysis to support the technical and medical conclusions of the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN). By investigating crashes and analyzing crash data and statistics, they have developed better medical triage criteria, improving emergency response.

Vehicle safety and biomechanics research encompasses a wide range of topics, including child safety and child restraint systems, rollover injury risk, airbag system performance, side-impact injury patterns, and other topics.

Center for Intelligent Systems Research

The Center for Intelligent Systems Research (CISR) studies human involvement in automobile accidents and develops crash prevention technologies. One of its focus areas is the development of intelligent vehicles to provide safety warnings to drivers, particularly drowsy drivers. Specifically, the Center studies and analyzes driver behavior to learn how to detect drowsiness in drivers and how to warn the driver after the drowsiness is detected.

The Center has developed an intelligent algorithm based on neural networks that looks into the driver's steering activity and from that detects the difference between the drowsy and non-drowsy driver. The algorithm has shown a nearly 93 percent success rate in detecting that some type of human error will occur up to three minutes before a crash occurs in simulated driving.

According to Professor Azim Eskandarian, "CISR and the NCAC together have the ability to study all phases of an accident, and this gives us a unique capability that other universities just don't have."