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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
UC Berkeley SafeTREC is excited to release the 2018 California Statewide Public Opinion Traffic Study 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.
What is a safe systems approach to road safety? SafeTREC, a consortium member of the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS), the new University Transportation Center (UTC) at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), is part of the effort to answer this question and define the concept of a safe systems approach for introduction in the U.S.
As part of our Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP), UC Berkeley SafeTREC has prepared a series of research briefs about the Safe Systems Approach to road safety. These research briefs support local advocacy, community, and agency partner efforts to engage and educate residents on pedestrian and bicycle safety.
