NHTSA MOVES AHEAD WITH $49 MILLION DRIVING SIMULATOR

The cost of the National Advanced Driving Simulator has risen $17 million, now totaling $49.3 million. TRW has won a $34.1 million contract to build the full-motion-based simulator at the University of Iowa. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) claims the simulator "will be the world's most technically sophisticated...capable of providing test drivers with an experience that nearly duplicates real world driving." Brian O'Neill, President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and Leonard Evans, researcher at General Motors, have both questioned the usefulness of the simulator. The Transportation Research Board found it difficult to pinpoint who would use the simulator and how much it would be used, though it did estimate use at 80% of design capacity or more and said NHTSA wouldn't be responsible for more than half its use. NHTSA will not only foot most of the bill for the simulator, but will also pay to use it when it becomes operational in 1999. Both O'Neill and Evans suggest NHTSA would do better to spend its dollars elsewhere.

• Record URL:
  • http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr3103.pdf
• 
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/0018988X
• Corporate Authors:

  Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

  1005 North Glebe Road
  Arlington, VA  United States  22201
• Publication Date: 1996-4-20

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: p. 6-7
• Serial:
  • Status Report
  • Volume: 31
  • Issue Number: 3
  • Publisher: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
  • ISSN: 0018-988X
  • Serial URL: https://www.iihs.org/status-report/

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Costs; Driving simulators; Financing; Utilization
• Identifier Terms: National Advanced Driving Simulator; U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Subject Areas: Finance; Research; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00724891
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Report/Paper Numbers: HS-042 151
• Files: HSL, USDOT
• Created Date: Aug 16 1996 12:00AM