THE INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED MOTORISTS LIMITED

Their core work

IAM RoadSmart is a UK road safety charity and the country's largest advanced driver and rider training organisation, with a membership base of active drivers and a long track record in driver education programmes. In H2020 research they contribute the practitioner perspective: real behavioural data on how drivers perceive, accept, and adapt to automated and connected vehicles, grounded in actual training experience rather than simulation. Their value to research consortia is the ability to translate findings into actionable training curricula and to serve as a credible end-user voice for projects studying human factors in transport automation. They do not build technology — they test human readiness for it.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

IAM RoadSmart entered H2020 research through DriveToTheFuture (2019–2022), where the focus was squarely on understanding what drivers think and need — user behaviour, HMI acceptance, training gaps, and readiness across different automation levels. The shift visible in Hi-Drive (2021–2025) moves from needs assessment to real-world deployment: large-scale cross-border demonstrations and connected automated driving in live conditions. This progression suggests IAM is transitioning from being a research informant (telling projects what drivers want) toward an operational actor (helping validate that automated systems work in practice with real road users).

IAM RoadSmart is moving from user research and attitude surveys toward participation in real-world deployment trials, making them an increasingly relevant partner for projects that need credible end-user validation at scale.

How they like to work

IAM RoadSmart has never coordinated an H2020 project, always entering as a participant or third party — which fits their profile as a practitioner organisation contributing specific expertise rather than driving research agendas. Both of their projects are large pan-European consortia (evidenced by 85 unique partners across 19 countries), suggesting they are comfortable operating as a specialist node inside complex multi-partner structures. Working with them means accessing a credible UK road safety institution with real driver communities, not a general-purpose research partner.

Despite only two projects, IAM RoadSmart has touched 85 unique consortium partners across 19 countries — a reflection of the inherently large transport research consortia they joined rather than an independently built network. Their connections span primarily European transport, ITS, and mobility actors in the H2020 ecosystem.

What sets them apart

IAM RoadSmart offers something most research partners cannot replicate: direct institutional access to a large, active community of trained advanced drivers in the UK, plus decades of structured driver education experience. In any project studying how people interact with automated or connected vehicles, they provide empirical grounding in real driver attitudes that academic and industrial partners typically lack. For consortium builders in transport automation, they are the credible practitioner voice that makes human factors work believable to reviewers and policymakers.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DriveToTheFuture
  IAM's primary funded H2020 project and the clearest expression of their core mission — studying real driver behaviour, training needs, and HMI acceptance across all automation levels.
• Hi-Drive
  A large-scale cross-border demonstration project for higher automation (2021–2025), where IAM's third-party role signals growing operational relevance beyond pure user research.