The concept for the Commercial Vehicle Crash Research Institute (CVCRI) was generated during discussion between certain attendees at the first National Crash Analysis Conference, which was held at The George Washington University’s (GWU) FHWA / NHTSA National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC) in 2010. As part of the conference, a series of full-scale tests were conducted in cooperation with the US Department of Transportation at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)’s Federal Outdoor Impact Laboratory (FOIL).
While commercial vehicles were not the subject of the conference’s testing, many participants, including the CVCRI’s founders, took note of the significant number of commercial vehicles at the test facility in various states of preparation and review. This started the conversation.
Soon, a contingent of conference attendees with interests in commercial vehicle safety gathered around Dr. Kenneth Opiela, from FHWA’s Office of Safety Research and Development, to learn more about FHWA’s role in commercial vehicle safety. Dr. Opiela’s explanation of FHWA’s approach to safety, which combines experimentation at the FOIL with leading Finite Element Modeling (FEM) research, inspired us to develop CVCRI.
What initially started as an informal association of individuals interested in supporting continued commercial vehicle safety research slowly took shape and became the Commercial Vehicle Crash Research Institute. Under the leadership of Mr. Ron Baade, CVCRI was founded as a registered 501(c)(3), non-profit organization with the sole purpose of expanding the understanding of commercial vehicle collisions. Mr. Baade has worked with fellow board members Mr. Lawrence Wilson, Mr. William Focha, Mr. Wade Bartlett, Mr. William Messerschmidt and Mr. Timothy Reust to develop a vision for CVCRI moving forward. |
