Road User Behavior

New Publication: Evaluating the impact of socio-economic contributing factors of cities in California on their traffic safety condition

January 20, 2021
Submitted by Lisa Peterson
New paper highlights how socio-economic characteristics of a specific area influence traffic safety

Former SafeTREC graduate student researcher and current postdoctoral researcher at the McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics (MITL) Amir M. Amiri has co-authored a new publication, "Evaluating the impact of socio-economic contributing factors of cities in California on their traffic safety condition" with researchers Koorosh Naderi, Jill F. Cooper, and Navid Nadimi in the Journal of Transport & Health.

Abstract Introduction

Careful consideration of the factors that...

New Release: 2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheets

September 30, 2020
SUBMITTED BY LISA PETERSON
2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheets feature recent data on some of California's most pressing traffic safety issues to help inform future road safety efforts during the pandemic
COVID-19 and Traffic Safety

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a series of public health measures to keep communities safe, like the stay at home order and physical distancing orders affecting operations of schools, restaurants, retail, and other non essential businesses. ...

2020 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Facts: Drug-Involved Driving

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

Driving can be impaired by a variety of legal and illegal drugs, substances, and medications. These various substances can impair cognition, attention, coordination, and other brain functions critical to driving safety. Unlike alcohol, the mechanism for absorption, distribution, and elimination of drugs from the body, as well as cognitive and behavioral effects differ greatly.

Analyses from SWITRS presented in this program area refer to drug-involvement and include fatal and serious injuries where law enforcement reported the driver to be under the influence of drugs. Crashes in the...

New article in the ITE Journal: The Transportation Safety Pandemic

September 4, 2020
SUBMITTED BY LISA PETERSON
"The good news is we already have the vaccine for the transportation safety pandemic. We just must choose to use it."

How can we apply the critical lessons we are learning from the COVID19 pandemic to change our thinking and approach to transportation safety? In the Cover of the September issue of the ITE JournalSeptember issue of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Journal, co-authors...

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: 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
SUBMITTED BY LISA PETERSON

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,...