Motorized Vehicle Safety

New Research Highlight: Selected Research on Road Diets

May 5, 2021
Research highlights how road diets have been shown to reduce traffic injury

SafeTREC's graduate student researcher Elijah Wade and research analyst Bor-Wen Tsai have co-authored a new research highlight, "Selected Research on Road Diets."

Abstract Pedestrian and bicyclist injury and mortality is a common occurrence in California. Data from the Transportation Injury Mapping System found that serious injuries among bicyclists and pedestrians increased between 2017-2019, with 3,174 recorded in 2017 and a peak of 3,495 serious injuries in 2019. Along with serious injuries, there has also...

New Research Highlight: Commercial vehicles, fatigue, parking, and safety

August 30, 2020

UC Berkeley SafeTREC is excited to share a new research highlight by research analyst Katherine Gosselin, "Commercial vehicles, fatigue, parking, and safety."

New research highlight focuses on the public health and road safety hazards of commercial driver operator fatigue and not having access to truck parking

For commercial drivers, operator fatigue and parking in undesignated areas can result in dangerous collisions. Exacerbating this issue is a lack of freight truck parking, making it difficult for truck operators to find a safe spot when in need of rest. For bicyclists and...

Commercial vehicles, fatigue, parking and safety

Gosselin, Katherine
2020
For commercial drivers, operator fatigue and parking in undesignated areas can result in dangerous collisions. Exacerbating this issue is a lack of freight truck parking, making it difficult for truck operators to find a safe spot when in need of rest. For bicyclists and pedestrians, loading and unloading commercial vehicles in downtowns also present hazards. Increasing the availability of legal truck parking could improve safety for all road users.

2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Emergency Medical Services

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2020
There are typically many contributing factors in motor vehicle crashes. Emergency Medical Services (EMS) play a critical role post-crash to reduce fatalities and serious injuries. Recent studies show that an effective emergency trauma care system can improve survival from serious injuries by as much as 25 percent and county-level coordinated systems of trauma care can reduce crash fatalities rates as much as 50 percent.

2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Alcohol-Involved Driving

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2020

While alcohol-impaired driving fatalities have fallen significantly in the last three decades, NHTSA reports that alcohol-impaired driving still comprises a large percentage of traffic injuries and fatalities. On average in 2018, one person died from an alcohol impaired driving crash every 50 minutes. There was a decrease in the number of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities and rate per 100 million VMT in the United States between 2017 and 2018. Analyses from SWITRS presented in this program area refer to alcohol involvement and include fatalities and serious injuries where law enforcement...

2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Aging Road Users

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2020

The older adult population in the United States aged 65 and older is expected to almost double between 2016 and 2060, from 49 million to 95 million. In 2018, there were 6,907 people aged 65 or older killed in a traffic crash in the United States; this accounted for 18.9 percent of all traffic fatalities. To provide context, the overall population aged 65 or older accounted for 14.9 percent of people in the United States and 19.4 percent of all licensed drivers in 2017. California has the largest number of licensed drivers aged 65 or older in the nation with 4,251,349, or 15.9 percent of...

2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Speeding-Related Crashes

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2020
A speeding-related crash is defined as one where a driver is speeding, racing, driving too fast for the conditions, or driving in excess of the posted speed limit. In the United States, in 2018, over one in four (25.7 percent) fatalities involved speeding, a steady decline from a decade ago. Speeding reduces a driver’s ability to steer safely around curves or objects, reduces the amount of time a driver has to react to a dangerous situation, and extends safe stopping distances. Analyses presented in the police traffic services program area refer to speeding-related fatal and serious injuries.

2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Occupant Protection

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2020

Restraint devices such as seat belts are a key element of motor vehicle occupant protection systems. Each year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducts the National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS) that measures, among many variables, the use of seat belts by occupants age eight and older. The 2019 NOPUS reported that seat belt use was 90.7 percent among front-seat passengers, a slight increase from the 89.6 percent observed in 2018. Additionally, the 2019 survey found that seat belt use increased during both weekday rush hours and non-rush hours. Use...

New Release: California Traffic Safety Survey 2020

July 22, 2020

UC Berkeley SafeTREC is excited to release the California Traffic Safety Survey 2020 led by Ewald & Wasserman Research Consultants (E&W). This study was conducted on behalf of the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) and the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) at the University of California, Berkeley.

Overview of the 2020 Study

The California Statewide Public Opinion Traffic Study is an annual cross-sectional survey of California drivers ages 18 and over regarding their opinions on traffic safety issues such as speeding, distracted driving,...