The U-M Transportation Research Institute has received a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish a new center to improve transportation safety.
The Center for Advancing Transportation Leadership and Safety, or the ATLAS Center, will be headed by UMTRI in partnership with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.
“We are very pleased to be given the opportunity for two of the largest transportation safety research institutes to work together to solve the most pressing transportation problems facing our nation,” said ATLAS director David Eby, a research professor at UMTRI.
The center will sponsor research, education and technology-transfer activity to find integrated, innovative solutions for transportation safety. Three of its early projects will focus on alcohol-impaired nighttime driving, child safety in cars, and reducing fatalities, injuries and societal costs of heavy truck crashes.
Eby said that the DOT grant will fund the center’s first year with the expectation that it will be renewed for the next three to five years.
