Data collection

Street Story: A platform for community engagement

Street Story

Street Story is a community engagement platform provided by UC Berkeley SafeTREC in English and Spanish that allows residents, community groups, and agencies to collect information about transportation crashes, near misses, general hazards, and safe locations to travel. The tool is free to use, anonymous, and publicly accessible. Street Story is not a...

Creating an inclusive bicycle level of service: Virtual bicycle simulator study

March 26, 2025
New report explores the benefits and limitations of using a VR environment to assess individuals’ bike infrastructure preferences

A new report by UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) co-authored by Julia Griswold, Edna Aguilar and Md. Mintu Miah, "Creating an inclusive bicycle level of service: Virtual bicycle simulator study" aims to assess how virtual reality (VR) technology can be used to gather user feedback on a variety of bicycling...

Creating an Inclusive Bicycle Level of Service: Virtual Bicycle Simulator Study

Griswold, Julia B.
Aguilar, Edna
Wang, Han
Miah, MD Mintu
2025

Bicycle level of service (BLOS) is an essential performance measure for transportation agencies to monitor and prioritize improvements to infrastructure, but existing measures do not capture the nuance of facility differences on the state highway system. However, with the advancements in virtual reality (VR) technology, a VR bicycle simulator is an ideal tool to safely gather user feedback on a variety of bicycling environments and conditions. This research explored the benefits and limitations of using a V...

A Multidimensional Clustering Algorithm for Studying Fatal Road Crashes

Fishbain, Barak
Grembek, Offer
2014

Road fatalities are rare outcomes of events that occur in a small time-space region. Although the exact chain of events for each fatality is unique, there are inherent similarities between road fatalities. The science of road safety is dedicated to identifying such similarities, mainly using statistical analysis tools. Researchers typically analyze patterns that emerge over space, such as hot-spot studies, or patterns that emerge over time, such as before-after studies. Traffic research enumerates 84 parameters that characterize a road fatality. A vast number of papers have tried to...

Develop Methods to Reduce or Prevent Backing Crashes

Cooper, Douglas L.
Duffy, Sarah
Orrick, Phyllis
Ragland, David R.
2009

Workplace motor vehicle incidents at Caltrans are a significant cause of injuries, employee lost time, and property damage. Because backing crashes are major contributors to motor vehicle incidents, identifying and promoting methods of reducing backing accidents is a top priority. According to internal Caltrans’ data, 92.3% of workplace backing crashes were preventable by the driver. Backing crashes are the single largest category of preventable crashes, representing 30% of preventable crashes in the Caltrans fleet. From 1998 through 2007, preventable backing crashes cost Caltrans at least...

Evaluation of Wet Weather Accident Causation Criteria

Oh, Soonmi
Ragland, David R.
Chan, Ching-Yao
2008

This report documents findings from analysis of traffic collision data from sites that display high collision rates only under wet pavement conditions. These sites were selected using Caltrans safety engineers’ field reports, Wet Table C “investigation required” locations, and a new approach called Continuous Risk Profile (CRP). The geometric features at the sites were studied via field visits and review of as-built plans. Rapid spatial changes (i.e., vertical and horizontal curve in short distance), narrower lane width, lack of median, and wider total freeway width were some of the...

Injury Crashes in California During COVID-19: Observations & Questions

June 4, 2020
Preliminary observations and important questions about traffic safety during COVID-19 based on provisional weekly police-reported injury crashes on state highways in California How to study traffic safety in a rapidly changing environment?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an abrupt impact on many aspects of our lives, including mobility. This has a direct impact on exposure (i.e., the level of activity on the roads), but can also trigger other responses that can affect road user behavior. Due to the rapid rate of change there is a need to monitor things...

CSCRS Webinar on 3/22: What Can We Learn from Fatal Automated Vehicle Crashes?

March 9, 2023

University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Meredith King, smiling, with event details for the 3/22 CSCRS webinar

Join University of Tennessee, Knoxville Graduate Research Assistant Meredith King for the latest session in the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS) Research to Practice Bytes Series on Wednesday, March 22 at 11:30am PT for...

Bicycle Helmet Use: Workbook and Guide for Evaluating Community-Based Programs

Geyer, Judy
Cooper, Jill F.
Ragland, David R.
2003

Two thirds of bicycle deaths occur as a result of traumatic brain injury; 88% of these injuries can be prevented by a helmet. In 1994, the State of California passed a law requiring all bicyclists under the age of 18 to wear helmets. Despite these legal obligations, many bicyclists still do not wear helmets. The estimates of bicycle helmet use is disparate throughout the state, with some communities reporting up to 80% use and others, especially inner-city areas, reporting less than 10% use.

The California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) provides grants for bicycle helmet education...