As another month begins, we are excited to announce another SafeTREC publication!
SafeTREC co-director Jill Cooper has co-authored a study published in the Journal of Traffic Injury Prevention, titled “Diffusing innovative road safety practice: A social network approach to identifying opinion leading U.S. cities” with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers Seth LaJeunesse, Stephen Heiny, Kelly Evenson, and Lisa Fiedler. The study, funded by the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS), sought to identify U.S. cities serving as models for road safety and the influential actors among diverse U.S. professional groups serving transportation safety needs within them.
In their study, authors uncovered how traffic safety information and innovative road safety practices are diffused within social networks and across municipal boundaries to examine how those networks might improve safe transportation systems.
Highlights from the study:
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Intermunicipal social networks are an opportunity to significantly improve safe systems across U.S
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Social network statistics identified 7 opinion-leader and 4 boundary-spanning municipalities
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Road safety professionals look to other municipalities, not necessarily those geographically close, as models for improving road user safety
+Access the study to read the entire findings.
This study draws upon the recent CSCRS research project, “Structures of Stakeholder Relationships in Making Road Safety Decisions” conducted by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and UC Berkeley SafeTREC researchers. Learn more here.
Interested in reading more publications from SafeTREC? Visit our publications page.