Road User Behavior

SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Motorcycle Safety

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

In 2016, there were 5,286 motorcycle riders killed on public roadways in the United States, a 5.1 percent increase from 2015. Motorcyclists are at greater risk of injury during collisions—in 2016, motorcyclists were 28 times more likely than passenger car occupants to be fatally injured in a traffic collision, per vehicle miles traveled. In 2016 only 65.3 percent of U.S. motorcyclists wore helmets. In states with universal helmet laws requiring all riders to wear helmets, the known helmet use rate among fatally injured motorcyclists ranged from 66 percent to 100 percent in 2016, while in...

SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Seat Belt Use

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

Restraint devices such as seat belts are a key element of motor vehicle occupant protection systems. According to the National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS), in 2016 there was a 90.1 percent front seat belt use rate for the nation as a whole, a 1.8 percent increase over the 88.5 percent reported in 2015. Front seat belt use was slightly higher among women (92.5 percent) compared with men (88.2 percent). Front passengers were more likely to use seat belts (90.1 percent) than rear seat occupants (80.6 percent). One strong determinant of seat belt use is the presence of a seat belt...

SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Emergency Medical Services

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

In 2016, there were 34,439 fatal crashes and countless more injury crashes in the United States. Increased coordination between first responders, hospitals, and other traffic safety stakeholders, along with better-quality Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data collection, would enhance planning efforts to improve first responder time to collisions. In emergency medicine, practitioners have a “golden hour,” sometimes less, following traumatic injury wherein prompt medical attention offers the highest chance to prevent death. Thus, improved timeliness and technologies, proximity to care, and...

SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Aging Road Users

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

In 2016, a total of 6,764 people age 65 and older were killed in collisions nationwide, which is a 7% increase from 6,238 in 2015. The older adult population of the United States—those 65 and older—is expected to nearly double between 2012 and 2050, from 43.1 million to 83.7 million. The older population accounted for 15.2 percent of residents in the U.S. and 18.8 percent of all licensed drivers in 2016. As drivers age, possible physical and mental changes including reduced visual acuity, increased fragility, restricted movement, and cognitive impairment may directly and indirectly result...

Traffic Safety Facts: Alcohol-Impaired Driving

Chen, Katherine L.
Tsai, Bor-Wen
Fortin, Garrett
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

While alcohol-impaired driving fatalities have fallen significantly in the past three decades, alcohol-impaired driving still comprises a large percentage of traffic injuries and fatalities. On average in 2016, one person died from an alcohol-impaired driving collision every 50 minutes. Additionally, there was an increase in the number of alcohol-driving fatalities in the United States between 2015 and 2016. In the United States, there were 10,497 people killed in alcohol-impaired collisions in 2016, a 1.7 percent increase from 10,320 in 2015, and a 1.6 percent increase from 10,336 in 2012...

The Goal of Road Safety in the Safe Systems Context

Fortin, Garrett
McMillan, Tracy
Grembek, Offer
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

Safe Systems is an approach to road safety that envisions the elimination of fatal and serious injuries and seeks to provide both a theoretical framework and practical roadmap for accomplishing such an ambitious goal. The Safe Systems approach involves a paradigm shift from traditional approaches to road safety planning and responsibility. This fact sheet provides an overview of the Safe Systems Approach and how it relates to both current road safety practice and initiatives such as Vision Zero. Read the full...

Shared Responsibility for Road Safety in Safe Systems Context

Fortin, Garrett
McMillan, Tracy
Grembek, Offer
Cooper, Jill F.
2018

Safe Systems is an approach to road safety that envisions the elimination of fatal and serious injuries and seeks to provide both a theoretical framework and practical roadmap for accomplishing such an ambitious goal. The Safe Systems approach involves a paradigm shift from traditional approaches to road safety planning and responsibility. This fact sheet discusses a principle integral to a Safe Systems Approach, shared responsibility for road safety. Read the full ...

Motor vehicle speed as a risk factor in pedestrian safety

McMillan, Tracy
Cooper, Jill F.
2019

Speed is a significant risk factor in road safety. Several recent reports from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Governors Highway Safety Administration (GHSA) highlight the need for a greater focus on speed management at the national, state and local level. As part of our Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP), UC Berkeley SafeTREC has prepared a new research brief, "Motor vehicle speed as a risk factor in pedestrian safety"...

April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month

April 9, 2019
SUBMITTED BY LISA PETERSON
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...

Introducing an Intelligent Intersection

Grembek, Offer
Kurzhanskiy, Alex A.
Medury, Aditya
Varaiya, Pravin
Yu, Mengqiao
2018

This project seeks to remove one important cause of intersection accidents: drivers, pedestrians and cyclists make mistakes because they lack sufficient information about the movement of others as they proceed through an intersection. There is spatial and temporal uncertainty. This missing information can be supplied by an ‘intelligent intersection’. It describes the signal from all approaches; predicts when the signal phase will change; uses sensor data to determine which blind spots are occupied; and predicts red light violations before they occur. The intelligent intersection broadcasts...