Peter Burns is Chief of the Ergonomics and Crash Avoidance Division at Transport Canada. He leads research supporting the development of motor vehicle safety standards, guidelines and related crash countermeasures. This work primarily focuses on assessing the safety impact of advanced crash avoidance systems and the human factors issues associated with new vehicle technologies. Peter is an expert for the ITS group of the UN World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations and participates in the development of international standards for vehicle ergonomics and advanced driver assistance systems.
Before Transport Canada, Peter worked as a Human Factors Psychologist at the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) in the U.K and for Volvo in Gothenburg Sweden. At Volvo he did research and product development work on the human-machine interaction with advanced vehicle technologies. He received a doctorate degree in automotive Human Factors from Loughborough University in England and a Masters in Psychology from Queen’s University in Canada. Peter has over 20 years of experience in the field of road safety research.