David W. Eby, PhD

Dr. David W. Eby is the Deputy Director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) in the College of Engineering and a Research Professor in UMTRI's Behavioral Sciences Group, a group he led from 2005-2025.  Dr. Eby is also a Psychology Faculty Associate in U-M Department of Psychology.  Dr. Eby earned a doctorate degree in experimental psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Eby's main research interest is the behavioral aspects of transportation safety and mobility.  His research at UMTRI has encompassed a number of topics including: use and misuse of occupant protection devices; risky driving behaviors among young and novice drivers; alcohol impaired driving policy analysis; occupant protection policy analysis; medical conditions and driving; aging and safe mobility; distracted driving; use of technology to improve safe mobility; older driver self-screening; rural transportation; employee traffic safety; drowsy driving; and driving self-regulation. Dr. Eby has managed more than 70 projects as a principal investigator and he has authored more than 320 scholarly publications.  He is the lead author of two books on older adult mobility: Maintaining Safe Mobility in an Aging Society and Perspectives and Strategies for Promoting Safe Transportation Among Older Adults, the latter of which has won the Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Book Award from the Gerontological Society of America (GSA).  Some of his key publications, such as the Driving Decisions Workbook, have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, Korean, German, and French, as well as modified for British and Australian audiences. 

Dr. Eby is a former long-standing member of two committees of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies: Occupant Protection and Safe Mobility for Older Adults. From 2005-2015, Dr. Eby served as an associate editor of the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention. He is a former convener of the Transportation and Aging Interest Group of the GSA and was awarded fellow of the GSA in 2008. Dr. Eby is the founding director of two University Transportation Centers (UTCs) sponsored by the United States Department of Transportation: the Michigan Center for Advancing Safe Transportation throughout the Lifespan (M-CASTL); and the Center for Advancing Transportation Leadership and Safety (ATLAS Center), formally a collaboration between UMTRI and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.  Dr. Eby’s research has been recognized for excellence by the Michigan Governors’ Traffic Safety Advisory Commission, American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ Standing Committee on Research, and Gerontological Society of America.