About the Institutes
Adrian Lund (top left) is president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the affiliated Highway Loss Data Institute. He joined the Institute in 1981 as a behavioral scientist.
Brian O'Neill (top right) served as president of IIHS and HLDI from 1985 until January 2006. He joined the Institute in 1969.
William Haddon Jr., M.D. (bottom left) became Institute president in1969 and served until his death in 1985. He was the first federal highway safety chief.
Russell Ira Brown (bottom right) was the first Institute president, serving from 1959 until 1967.
IIHS crash test facility in Ruckersville, VA
Video tour of the VRC
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries, and property damage that result from crashes on the nation's roads. Our research focuses on three main areas: human factors, or preventing crashes by changing driver behavior; vehicle factors, or reducing deaths and injuries by improving vehicle design; and environmental factors, or changing roadway design, signs, and signals to reduce crashes.
The Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) shares and supports this mission through scientific studies of insurance data representing the human and economic losses resulting from the ownership and operation of different types of vehicles and by publishing insurance loss results by vehicle make and model. Learn more about HLDI.
Both organizations are wholly supported by these auto insurers.
History
For decades, IIHS has been a leader in finding out what works and doesn't work to prevent motor vehicle crashes from happening in the first place and to minimize injuries in the crashes that still occur.
IIHS was founded in 1959 by three major insurance associations representing 80 percent of the US auto insurance market. At first, IIHS's purpose was to support highway safety efforts by others. A decade later, IIHS was reinvented as an independent research organization. William Haddon Jr., M.D., who served as the nation's first federal highway safety chief, oversaw this transition after becoming president of IIHS in 1969. By then, he already was leading the transformation of the highway safety field from one focused solely on accident prevention to one using a modern, scientific approach to identify a full range of options for reducing crash losses. In particular:
- Human factors research addresses problems associated with teenage drivers, alcohol-impaired driving, truck driver fatigue, and safety belt use, to name a few.
- Vehicle research focuses on both crash avoidance and crashworthiness. Crash tests are central to crashworthiness research, and IIHS testing expanded with the opening of the Vehicle Research Center.
- Research aimed at the physical environment includes, for example, assessment of roadway designs to reduce run-off-the-road crashes and eliminate roadside hazards.
This scientific approach has been remarkably successful. The number of people killed on the nation's roads, while still far too high, has been falling since 1979, even as the population and the number of miles driven have been climbing. Much of this improvement is a result of vehicles becoming safer.
At the same time, IIHS recognizes that vehicle design isn't the whole story and continues to look for ways to improve driver behavior and roadway design. For example, IIHS's work has led more states to adopt primary safety belt laws and graduated licensing requirements and has encouraged communities to build roundabouts.
Vehicle Research Center
In 1992, IIHS opened the Vehicle Research Center (VRC). Tucked in the foothills of central Virginia, this state-of-the-art facility is where IIHS performs the crash tests that form the basis of its widely consulted vehicle ratings.
VRC tests help consumers make informed decisions. Vehicles are rated for safety based on performance in several tests, and those that earn good ratings all around receive the Top Safety Pick designation. More information on these ratings is available here. IIHS tests have encouraged automakers to produce safer vehicles, which is the ultimate goal. Knowing that consumers consult the ratings before buying, manufacturers design cars and trucks with these tests in mind. As a result, vehicles have been greatly improved.
When the IIHS began its frontal offset crash tests in 1995, roughly half of the vehicles earned marginal or poor ratings, and more were rated poor than good. Today nearly all vehicles have good frontal protection ratings. Similarly, when side impacts began in 2003 and rear crash ratings in 2004, not many got good ratings, while more get good ratings today now roof strength/rollover ratings are improving, too.
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