Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Description
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) website is www.iihs.org/iihs. It is a self-governing, non-profit educational and scientific organization established in 1959 by three main insurance associations that represented 80% of the United States auto insurance market. Initially, the intention of the institution was to support others on highway protection efforts. Some years later, the association was reinvented as a self-governing research organization. Mr. William Haddon was the first ruler of the country’s federal road safety. He oversaw this evolution after being appointed the leader of IIHS in 1969. By that time, he was already managing the highway safety field transformation from the one focused only on accident avoidance to one that uses a modern and scientific approach to recognize a wide range of choices for decreasing crash losses (American Psychiatric Pub 23). The institution has been carrying out research on the following.
- Issues related to truck drivers’ exhaustion and the use of safety belts, alcohol-impaired driving, young drivers, and many others are addressed by human factors study.
- Vehicle study addresses crashworthiness and crash prevention. The crash is vital to crashworthiness analysis and the IIHS testing extended with the establishment of the Vehicle Research Center (VRC).
- The physical environment research includes the evaluation of road designs to lower run-of-the-road accidents and eliminates roadside risks.
This technical method has been extremely successful because the rate of deaths as a result of road accidents has decreased in the United States since 1979. In addition, the distance in miles driven and the population has increased due to safer vehicles guarantee in the nation. Likewise, the IIHS has recognized that vehicle design is not the only work, but goes ahead and looks for means to improve the behavior of drivers as well as highway design (American Psychiatric Pub 25).
Mission
The organization’s main mission is dedicated to decreasing the losses as a result of injuries, deaths, and property damage originating from crashes on the country’s roads. It looks forward to decreasing road accidents, carrying out testing on automobiles, and communicating these discoveries to the vehicle insurance organization that provides financial support for its job. The research provides relevant information regarding the loss amount sustained for varied vehicles involved in an accident. IIHS is vital to the insurance industry that equates its rates for various automobiles on their study findings. The costs are then passed to the client; hence it is good to be familiar with the safety ratings of a vehicle one intends to buy (American Psychiatric Pub 27).
Safety standards
The organization advises parents on how to educate teenager drivers concerning safe driving while on the road. The institution provides brochures that assist to explain the best ways to train young people about driving as well as how to use common sense. The organization also teaches how to protect a child in the car by using airbag, car seats and facilitate finding ratings on different cars by both make and model. Parents are advised to carry children under 13 in the rear seat and have to use appropriate restraints depending on the size and age of the child. The IIHS advises on the implementation of crucial safety belt rules and regulations as well as licensing requirements. The organization encourages communities in building roundabouts and use automated enforcement that includes speed cameras and red lights. Drivers are advised to ensure the vehicle is fitted with a rear camera that enables them to see behind thereby preventing back-over crashes. The rear camera is said to be more effective as compared to parking sensors as they help drivers to avoid objects behind them (American Psychiatric Pub 35
Work Cited
American Psychiatric Pub. Privacy policy. Insurance institute for highway safety, 1996. Web. 27 March, 2014