Road User Behavior

Drivers, Pedestrians, and Cyclists in California Want Complete Streets: Comparison of Results from Roadway Design Surveys of Pedestrians, Drivers, Bicyclists, and Transit Users in Northern and Southern California

Sanders, Rebecca L.
Griffin, Ashleigh
MacLeod, Kara E.
Cooper, Jill F.
2014

This paper compares findings from two recent surveys on roadway design preferences among pedestrians, drivers, bicyclists, and public transit users along major urban corridors in the metro areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Sponsored by the California Department of Transportation (DOT), the research explored design preferences that could increase perceived traffic safety, walkability, bikability, and economic vitality along urban arterials. Results from intercept surveys showed that roadway users desire similar design features along the test corridors, which carry 25,000-40,000...

Explore our latest CPBST reports!

August 3, 2023
Submitted by Kristen Leckie

As the summer rolls on, our Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training Program (CPBST) continues to work with communities across the state of California to advance their pedestrian and bicycle safety goals. In 2023, the CPBST program is partnering with 7 new communities to:

review pedestrian and bicycle crash data and safety strategies;

facilitate a walking and biking assessment;

strategize with participants to define specific community pedestrian...

SafeTREC's Liza Lutzker to present at 2025 SER Annual Meeting

May 29, 2025
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

UC Berkeley SafeTREC research data analyst Liza Lutzker will be presenting "Trends and disparities in pedestrian injuries and fatalities in hit-and-run crashes" in a poster session at the 2025 Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) Annual Meeting on June 11th, 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts. This presentation draws from a current research project for the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety (CPBS) that is examining recent trends and risk factors in pedestrian fatalities and injuries in hit-and-run...

Sites chosen for 2025 Complete Streets Safety Assessments program

April 21, 2025
Submitted by Karen Nguyen Vo

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 Complete Streets Safety Assessment (CSSA) program!

...

Watch as traffic safety research is explained in 101 seconds

May 6, 2025
By Sean Patrick Farrell

There’s a statistic that sticks in the minds of many who work on traffic safety issues: The U.S., among wealthy nations, has the highest rate of road traffic fatalities. People in the U.S. are nearly three times more likely to die in a car crash than people in Australia, and six times more likely than in Sweden.

For Julia Griswold, this troubling fact should be front of mind for everyone, whether they are drivers, cyclists, pedestrians or transportation planners. Griswold runs UC Berkeley’s...

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

March 24, 2025
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

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)!

...

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
SUBMITTED BY LISA PETERSON

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...

2018 National DUI Summer Mobilization August 17 - September 3

August 15, 2018
SUBMITTED BY LISA PETERSON
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
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

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...