Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) has announced 15 new projects focused on a better understanding of driver behavior, crash avoidance, and crash injury mitigation.

CSRC says the goal is to help advance automotive safety industrywide for societal good as part of a five-year research phase. Projects range from testing automatic emergency braking (AEB) effectiveness and injury prediction technologies to advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) education and behavioral safety interventions.

Fourteen other projects in addition to the 15 have already been completed as part of the five-year project.

“Through launching these projects, CSRC is responding to the latest trends in the automotive industry and traffic safety,” said CSRC Director Danil Prokhorov, in a news release. “We are focused on nimbleness by addressing today’s safety needs with new insights into future products, processes, and policies that can help create a safe mobility society for tomorrow.”

The new projects are categorized by their application to CSRC’s current research tracks — human-centric (safe technology interaction with people), safety assurance (crash avoidance), and assessment (safety decision-making empowerment) which are “designed to address the emerging challenges of the changing mobility ecosystem.”

Toyota also announced the launch of its Risk ATTEND program (Risk Anticipation Training to Enhance Novice Driving), based on CSRC research.

“Many new drivers know about distracted driving, but Toyota is extending that knowledge to interactive learning,” a news release from the OEM states. “Through self-paced driving simulation modules developed in collaboration with global education technology leader Discovery Education and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, teens are exposed to difficult driving scenarios before encountering them behind the wheel, helping to improve drivers’ abilities to predict or detect risky situations on the road. The Risk ATTEND module joins the full Toyota teen-driver toolkit at TeenDrive365.”

TeenDrive365 is a collaborative program of Toyota and Discovery Education to promote safe driving habits, according to the program’s website.

Toyota created CSRC in 2011 to advance safety for the industry through collaborations with universities, hospitals, and other research institutions, the release states. CSRC has completed or commenced 116 research projects with more than 30 different institutions.

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Featured image: CSRC logo provided by Toyota