Road User Behavior

The 2025 CPBSP: Partnering with 13 communities throughout California for safer walking, biking and rolling

March 24, 2025

UC Berkeley SafeTREC and California Walks are excited to share news about the communities throughout California that we will be partnering with this year as part of our 2025 Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP)!

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CPBS 3/26 webinar: Edge lane roads - U.S. experience and future directions

March 24, 2025
People walking and biking in a crosswalk with "Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety" in dark teal on a white background below Join the conversation with CPBS about the safety benefits of ELRs

Join our consortium partners at the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety (CPBS) and guest speakers on Wednesday, March 26 at 11am PST...

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...

Reflections on the 2019 Safe Systems Summit: Redefining Transportation Safety

June 7, 2019

According to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were 37,133 traffic fatalities on U.S. roadways in 2017, a 1.8-percent decrease from the 37,806 people killed in 2016. While there has been a general downward trend downward in traffic fatalities overall, this is still an alarmingly high number of deaths – and there have been troubling increases for vulnerable road users like pedestrians. A new report from the Governors Highway Safety...

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...

2018 National DUI Summer Mobilization August 17 - September 3

August 15, 2018
Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over
DUI Doesn't Just Mean Booze Facts

Driving under the influence of alcohol is a serious safety issue. According to the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), one person every 50 minutes was killed in an alcohol-involved crash nationwide in 2016. In California, 1,059 people lost their lives that year due to crashes involving a drunk driver.

Drug-impaired driving is also a...

Course Announcement: Spring 2023 Traffic Safety and Injury Control

November 14, 2022

People walking in crosswalk with traffic passing with course title, time and date overlaid

Course Description:

Injuries from traffic crashes are a major cause of death and disability in the United States and around the world. In the United States injury from traffic crashes is the leading cause of death and disability for people ages 1 to 34, and a major cause for all...

Course Announcement: Fall 2022 Public Health Injury Prevention and Control

July 6, 2022

Photo collage showing emergency responders at a car crash, a gun with ammunition, and a crashed bicycle and bicycle helmet in a crosswalk

Download Course PDF COURSE OVERVIEW

Injury is the leading cause of death for ages 1-44, and the leading cause of years of potential life lost up to age 65,...

Research Brief: The Influence of Alcohol Outlet Proximity on Pedestrian Injury Incidence: Insights from Literature

September 8, 2023
New research brief explores potential association between the presence of alcohol outlets and pedestrian injuries

According to the latest annual Spotlight report from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), there were 7,508 pedestrian fatalities in 2022, the highest number of people killed while walking since 1981. Preventing these pedestrian crashes is a critical concern, and researchers and road safety professionals have conducted...

April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month

April 9, 2019
California drivers encouraged to "silence" the distraction during Distracted Driving Awareness Month

Graphic from JustDrive campaign

Source: California Office of Traffic Safety

April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month and the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) and the California Highway Patrol (CHP) will join...