What Road Safety Topics and Research Areas Does IIHS Cover?

IIHS organizes its road safety work into ten research areas, each combining crash-risk data, law and enforcement questions, and the effectiveness of vehicle or infrastructure countermeasures. You can reach all of them from the "Key issues in road safety" section of iihs.org via "See all research areas." The coverage is aimed at three audiences at once: consumers choosing vehicles, policymakers weighing rules, and safety professionals designing programs.

The ten research areas

Each area follows a similar logic: define the risk, examine the rules and enforcement that shape it, then test whether a technology or design change actually reduces harm. The advanced driver assistance area, for example, pairs promotion of front crash prevention with explicit attention to the limitations of those systems — a reminder that the same page can tell you what a feature does and where it stops working.

How the research shows up on the site

The homepage surfaces current work alongside the topic list, which is useful for seeing how a research area translates into findings:

• Alcohol and drugs: a Utah law linked to a long-term drop in alcohol-related crashes after the state imposed a stricter blood-alcohol limit.
• Advanced driver assistance: an analysis arguing that sensors for automatic emergency braking and blind spot detection are often blamed for high repair costs, but many other causes exist.
• Large trucks and commercial vehicles: work vehicles, including cargo vans and heavy-duty pickups, lagging behind passenger vehicles in front crash prevention.
• Pedestrians, cyclists, and emerging technology: a finding that Waymo's driverless cars crash less often than human drivers.

These items illustrate the mix you should expect: a law evaluation, a cost explainer, a vehicle-class comparison, and a technology comparison. If you are researching a policy question, the law-focused items are the closest match; if you are shopping, the vehicle-comparison items matter more.

Using the research areas for a decision

For vehicle shopping: start with the vehicle ratings tool on the homepage, where you can search by make and model and specify a model year. Use the research areas to understand why a rating matters — for instance, the front crash prevention and partial automation material explains what the tests measure. IIHS also publishes award winners and a teen-vehicle guide produced with Consumer Reports, which narrows the field before you search individual ratings.

For policy or enforcement reference: the alcohol, distracted driving, motorcycle, seat belt, and speed areas are organized around laws and their observed effects, so they are the natural entry points. Treat any single study as one piece of evidence; the Utah finding, for example, describes a long-term drop associated with a stricter limit rather than proving the law alone caused it.

For safety program design: the red light running and speed areas cover camera programs, signal timing, traffic calming, and intelligent speed assistance — the infrastructure and enforcement side rather than the vehicle side.

Practical notes

• The site is in English, and the research areas are listed as a single index rather than separate menus per audience.
• Headings and excerpts describe the scope of each area; the detailed studies sit behind "See all research areas" and the individual topic pages.
• Dates on featured items (for example, October 2026 and August 2026) indicate when work was posted, so check them if you need the most current findings.
• IIHS describes itself as an independent, nonprofit scientific and educational organization focused on reducing deaths, injuries, and property damage from crashes — useful context when weighing how it frames risk.