Center for Transportation Safety

Texas A&M Transportation Institute
505 East Huntland Drive
Room 45514
Austin, TX 78752
(512) 407-1172
[email protected]

Dr. Michael Manser is a human factors psychologist and a senior research scientist within the Center for Transportation Safety at TTI. He also serves as the Center for Transportation Safety Director within TTI. Dr. Manser holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and has been conducting transportation human factors and safety research, education, and outreach for nearly 30 years.

Michael’s areas of expertise include human factors, driving simulation, driver behavior, visual attention, and automated and connected vehicles. He has served as principal investigator or task leader on over fifty projects on driver distraction, infrastructure and vehicle-based safety devices, mental models, and driver workload. Michael began his career in 1997 at American Express Financial Advisors working on making software interfaces more usable to staff. From 1998 to 2002, he worked in TTI’s Human Factors Program conducting some of the initial research into the distracting effects of in-vehicle devices on driver behavior and performance. He returned to TTI in 2013 after 11 years at the University of Minnesota as the director of the HumanFIRST Program. His work at the the University of Minnesota examined how infrastructure-based information systems can support better decision by drivers at high risk intersections. His research work at TTI now focuses on the development of mental models and trust relative to the use of varying levels of vehicle automation, the role of driver stress in transportation safety, and impoving safety for pedestrians and motorcyclists through the development and implementation of statewide education and outreach programs.

Michael has been a thought leader in professional societies and standards committees, including several National Academies of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board committees. He is the founder and past chair of the TRB human factors in vehicle automation committee and is currently on the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation Motorcycle Advisory Board. He is a reviewer for Human Factors, Accident Analysis and Prevention, and Transportation Research Part F. He has also served as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health SBIR program. Michael has published book chapters and professional journal articles within the domain of human factors and transportation.