The Driving Safety Research Institute at Iowa is investigating how to safely bring automated driving to rural America.
As a shuttle van cruised down a gravel road south of Iowa City, Cheryl Roe had a serene look on her face, even though she, as the driver, was not grasping the steering wheel.
“I really have to become one with the vehicle,” says Roe (99BS). “I have to know what it’s going to do and when it’s going to do it.”
Far from some mystical automotive kinship, Roe’s ease comes from knowing the vehicle had been trained to drive on that road. Roe, the automated vehicle transportation outreach specialist at the Driving Safety Research Institute (DRSI) at the University of Iowa, operates the shuttle as part of a federally funded pilot program to study how automated vehicles can run safely on rural roads. While automated rural driving is far from a reality, researchers envision a day when Iowans and other rural residents have another safe transportation option to make a doctor’s appointment or grocery store run.
“We’ve chosen to own our ruralness,” says Daniel McGehee, director of the DSRI, which was the first in the nation to study automated driving in rural conditions. “We want to look at increasing people’s quality of life through adding another dimension of transportation that’s not available today, that will allow rural folks to extend their lives in a social and healthy way.”
With more than three decades of expertise in vehicle-human safety, DSRI leads the Automated Driving Systems (ADS) for Rural America Demonstration project, which in December 2023 wrapped up three and a half years of research to understand the unique demands that rural roads place on automated vehicles. DSRI researchers confronted myriad obstacles: the sheer variety of rural driving environments; the effects of snow, sleet, and other weather variables; and the need for technological innovations to navigate rural roads.
Although only about 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, nearly 40% of all fatal crashes occur on rural roads, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Researchers from the UI College of Public Health and its Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health have been at the forefront of studying rural road hazards, particularly those involving farm equipment—a leading cause of injuries and fatalities in the agricultural industry.
To better understand the risk factors behind rural roadway crashes, Iowa researchers developed a video and GPS monitoring system to capture real-time interactions between vehicles and farm equipment. Studies led by former Iowa faculty Cori Peek-Asa and Marizen Ramirez revealed that most crashes involving farm vehicles occur when a passenger vehicle either rear-ends a slower-moving farm vehicle or attempts to overtake one. Speeding also plays a significant role in these incidents.
Meanwhile, Cara Hamann (03BS, 12PhD), a UI associate professor of epidemiology, focuses on prevention strategies aimed at non-farm vehicles. Hamann has developed a community-level rural road safety campaign called “We’re on This Road Together” to encourage drivers to adopt safer behaviors, such as maintaining a safe following distance, avoiding risky passing maneuvers, and reducing speed around farm vehicles.
A public health professor studies how to keep rural workers safe during extreme weather.
In January 2024, a polar vortex surge caused much of the U.S.—including Iowa—to experience dangerous subzero temperatures. It even resulted in the first day of University of Iowa classes after winter break being moved completely online.
In urban areas like Iowa City, video conferencing and email can offer an alternative to venturing outside. People who work outdoors in rural communities, however, do not always have that option.
“Farmers still have to go out and feed the cows,” says Diane Rohlman, director of the Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest and a professor and endowed chair of rural safety and health at the UI College of Public Health. “Or you still have to take care of the hogs.”
In rural communities, environmental hazards and natural disasters often hit harder. Response time to emergencies takes longer than in the city because of communities and homes being spread out, first responders being volunteers, and greater barriers to communication. An aging population and infrastructure also leave rural communities more vulnerable to crisis.
Rohlman serves employers and workers in rural areas by helping them devise strategies to prevent or reduce risks in the workplace, including during emergency situations. In the case of a cold snap, she says, “You think about eliminating outside work and trying to move it into a building. But sometimes that just can’t happen; you have to go outside to do your work.”
“[In a rural community], everyone comes together when there is a disaster.” —Diane Rohlman
When workers cannot completely avoid the weather, Rohlman recommends adopting measures to lessen its impact for a safer work environment. On a frigid day, this includes avoiding going outside until it’s warmer; taking frequent breaks to warm up, including sitting in heated tractors or vehicles; and wearing layers to avoid frostbite and hypothermia.
Rohlman says she’s witnessed the strength and resilience of tight-knit rural communities through bitter windchills, heat waves, tornadoes, and floods.
“When we think about emergency preparedness, rural communities often use a whole community approach,” she says. “So, in a city, you may rely on certain people to do it, but [in a rural community], everyone comes together when there is a disaster.”
While women make up more than one-third of the agricultural workforce in the U.S. and play an even larger role internationally, they have been historically overlooked in research about farmer stress and mental health.
In a study published late last year by the Journal of Rural Health, University of Iowa researchers Carly Nichols and Jonathan Davis (17PhD) sought to change that by creating the Women Farmer Stress Inventory, a tool to help understand the unique stressors that women face in the field. They used the inventory to survey nearly 600 Iowa women farmers in a study funded by the UI-based Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest.
The respondents indicated that time pressures and workload were among their greatest stressors, which were often related to childcare, eldercare, and housekeeping responsibilities outside of farming. Women who were younger, married, managed a smaller farm, or also worked outside the farm were more likely to report higher levels of stress.