Road User Behavior

2025 series of SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts released!

October 27, 2025
Submitted by Karen Nguyen Vo and Cindy Chen
The 2025 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts series features the latest trends and data on various traffic safety topics, including pedestrian and bicyclist safety, drug and alcohol-impaired driving, and emergency medical services.

UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) is excited to announce the release of the 2025 series of Traffic Safety Fact Sheets, which feature traffic safety data and trends at the national and state level on twelve road...

SafeTREC's Griswold to present on Unified Safe System Implementation Framework at 2025 AASHTO Safety Summit

October 13, 2025
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

The Safe System Approach (SSA) is central to U.S. transportation safety. While progress is underway, it is often siloed and reactive. On October 28, 2025 SafeTREC director Julia Griswold will present a poster at the 2025 AASHTO Safety Summit and Peer Exchange in New Orleans, LA that proposes a Unified Safe System Implementation Framework combining concepts from public health, context-sensitive design, and kinetic energy risk management to address this. The matrix links SSA elements to...

Doctoral student Katarina Cook to present at AMA Research Challenge Oct. 22-23, 2025

October 13, 2025
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

Former SafeTREC visiting student researcher and current doctoral student at UC Davis School of Medicine and Institute of Transportation Studies Katarina Cook will be presenting the poster "At the Intersection of Hit-and-Runs and Homelessness: Pilot Risk Analysis and Postmortem Case Series" at the American Medical Association (AMA) Research Challenge virtual symposim. This presentation will highlight findings from a pilot study co-authored by SafeTREC director Julia Griswold and and research data analyst Liza Lutzker, that investigated how...

Pairing Speed Limit Reductions and Infrastructure to Lower Fatal and Serious (FSI) Crashes

Noelani Fixler
Melie Ekunno
2025

While recent California legislative reforms grant jurisdictions greater flexibility to lower speed limits, evidence suggests that reductions in posted speed limits alone are insufficient to meaningfully reduce crash severity. This research brief examines how speed limit reductions, when paired with infrastructure design, enforcement strategies, and contextual land-use planning, can more effectively lower FSI outcomes. Aligned with the Safe System Approach, the countermeasure layers of roadway geometry, lighting, bicycle-specific infrastructure, and enforcement shape driver behavior and...

SafeTREC's Julia Griswold to present at the 2025 California Active Transportation Program Symposium

October 8, 2025
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

On October 23, 2025 SafeTREC director Julia Griswold will present in the "Telling Your Story: Crafting a Compelling Grant Narrative" breakout session as part of the 2025 California Active Transportation Program Symposium in Davis, California. This session will discuss how to highlight the major impacts of your projects: why it matters, who it benefits, and how the community will change in...

SafeTREC to present winning INRIX + MetroLab 2025 project in October 8th webinar showcase

October 2, 2025
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

On Wednesday, October 8, 2025, SafeTREC postdoctoral researcher Sujin Lee will present "Evaluate the effects of speed camera installation using telematics data in San Francisco" in the upcoming Metrolab Student Showcase as part of the Talk with the Experts Series. The webinar will showcase the groundbreaking research from the 2025 INRIX x MetroLab Challenge winners. UC Berkeley SafeTREC was...

New research briefs released on youth helmet adoption and a holistic approach to reducing speed limits

October 2, 2025
Submitted by Kris Leckie
UC Berkeley SafeTREC has recently released two new research briefs: "Advancing Youth Helmet Adoption Through Community-Based Programming" and “Pairing Speed Limit Reductions and Infrastructure to Lower Fatal and Serious (FSI) Crashes.”

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New release: California Active Transportation Data Portal for pedestrian, bicyclist, micromobility count data

September 30, 2025
Submitted by Karen Nguyen Vo

Home page of the CAT Data Portal

UC Berkeley SafeTREC has launched the California Active Transportation Data Portal (CAT Data Portal), a platform to collect, store, and visualize bicyclist, pedestrian, wheelchair, and other...

UC Berkeley SafeTREC contributes bicycle simulator to Self-eSTEM summer camp

September 30, 2024
Submitted by Karen Nguyen Vo

In August 2024, the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) demonstrated our bicycle simulator — originally created to gather data on cyclists' perceptions of safety in different road environments — to Self-eSTEM to complement their summer camp program for girls who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC) and are interested in science,...

Cal ITE's Interdistrict Transportation Competition workshop features SafeTREC's VR simulator

November 27, 2024
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

This fall, the UC Berkeley student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Cal Transportation Team hosted the 2024 Interdistrict Transportation Competition (ITC) a conference intended to be a space for students to "engage in various transportation-related challenges often seen in the professional world, including in fields like planning, design, and data analysis."...