Development and Advising in Traffic Safety (DATS) is a research group attached to the INTRAS (Institute of Traffic and Road Safety) at the University of Valencia. The research group was created in 1995(*) and is formed by teachers and researchers of renowned prestige, some of them with more than twenty years of experience on teaching and researching in Traffic and Road Safety.

Their competences enlarge by cooperating with other researchers and research groups in INTRAS (FACTHUM:lab, METRAS, PRECOVIR, SINTEC) and other research centers of the University of Valencia, (ARTEC group from the IRTIC-Institute of Robotics, Technologies of Information and Communications) and other universities (Université Catholique, like de l’Ouest de Angers -France-.

In addition, the members of the Research Group DATS are immersed in the grouping processes derived from the directives from Bolonia, and the tendences to maximize the participation on other structures of research and integration in excellence groups (Laboratoire PPI, Micro-clusters VLC/Campus of Excellence).

DATS work is centered around the consulting, research, development, innovation, formation and spreading on the topic of Traffic and Road Safety. Since its creation, the group has taken part in more than 100 projects for Administrations, Institutions and Enterprise, both nationally and internationally, who trusted us for a better knowledge and efficiently answer-giving to specific and global problems related with traffic accidents.

Research developed by DATS has contributed to an increase of knowledge on the area. In this sense, the group makes efforts to spread their discoveries by their dissemination through books, articles in science journals and/or scientific and outreaching conferences. The group has also taken an active part in mass media with the objective of communicating and influencing the average population.

DATS has also designed interventions (plans, measures and countermeasures, programs, etc.), resources and tools that they have made their application possible, and some of them have also been taken into practice with proper evaluation.

The quality process of DATS developments and the hopes put by its members in every project have achieved, nowadays, an unbeatable prestige and recognition for collaborating entities and developed products.

Although DATS has centered its efforts towards maximizing the social benefits that research and intervention make possible on traffic accidents, it also has the objective of keeping the practice of certain ethical and essential values in order to make a better society. This is undoubtedly the best recognition we are looking for with the usefulness of giving answers to the problems of the society.

* From 1995 to 2003 the group members made up the former Formation and Consulting section of the INTRAS. In 2003 the new research group was established under its current denomination (DATS).