Highway Safety Institute in Virginia Plans Expansion

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The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is planning a $30 million expansion at its Ruckersville campus. The project will enable IIHS to undertake more rigorous scientific evaluations of crash avoidance systems than the current facility allows.

A conceptual rendering of the largest physical part of the project which is a 5-acre covered outdoor track for crash avoidance testing. IIHS

The project includes enlarging the current outdoor test track to accommodate high-speed maneuvers and human factors research and constructing a separate covered track for more-controlled tests and demonstrations. Robotic test equipment will be acquired, and additional laboratory, office and meeting space will be built.

The institute is the home of the “crash test dummy.”

“This expansion will allow insurers to continue to play a lead role in improving highway safety,” says Adrian Lund, IIHS president. “The facility will allow us to evaluate vehicle-based crash avoidance systems so we can encourage adoption of the most effective ones, just as our crash test program has encouraged state-of-the-art crashworthiness design.”

The expansion is expected to create 10 jobs. Also, about 30 people from the institute’s Northern Virginia headquarters are expected to relocate to Ruckersville.