Road User Behavior

Farewell from SafeTREC Co-Director Offer Grembek

March 10, 2023
Submitted by Offer Grembek

After 13 great years of leading safety research at University of California, Berkeley, I’ve decided that it’s time for another challenge and I will be leaving my position as Co-Director of the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC). My time at SafeTREC has been extremely rewarding and I believe that it was also impactful.

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CSCRS Webinar on 3/22: What Can We Learn from Fatal Automated Vehicle Crashes?

March 9, 2023
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Meredith King, smiling, with event details for the 3/22 CSCRS webinar

Join University of Tennessee, Knoxville Graduate Research Assistant Meredith King for the latest session in the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS) Research to Practice Bytes Series on Wednesday, March 22 at 11:30am PT for...

2022 California Active Transportation Bills Go into Effect

February 27, 2023
Submitted by Kristen Leckie
With the start of the new year, California saw a number of active transportation bills go into effect. You can find out what bills are now live below!

Photo of the front of the State Capitol in Sacramento, it's a white building with columns and a large dome in the middle of the roof with pine trees on either side of the building.

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Tragic trend in hit-and-run fatalities

February 15, 2023
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

On February 9, 2023, SafeTREC Researcher Julia Griswold discussed the tragic trend of hit-and-run fatalities for a CBS Sacramento news story about a hit-and-runVideo still of the NHTSA 2020 hit-and-run statistics in Modesto, California with correspondent Ashley Sharp. "It...

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

View Course Flyer

Course Description:

Injuries from traffic crashes are a major cause of death and disability in the United States and around the world....

New Release: 2022 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheets

September 12, 2022
Submitted by Lisa Peterson
2022 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

UC Berkeley SafeTREC is excited to announce the release of the 2022 series of Traffic Safety Fact Sheets, which feature traffic safety data and trends at the national and state level on a variety of road safety topics. This series also highlights the Safe System approach to road safety, which the United States Department of Transportation...

2022 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheet: Drug-Involved Driving

Katherine L. Chen
Bor-Wen Tsai
Garrett Fortin
Jill F. Cooper
2022
The use of cannabis, prescription drugs, and other drugs are increasingly prominent on roadways in the United States, where 25.3 percent of the nation’s 38,824 fatalities in 2020 were related to drug-involved driving. Driving can be impaired by a variety of legal and illegal drugs, substances, and medications. The effect of specific drugs on behavior and driving skills vary considerably depending on how they act in the brain and are metabolized. They can slow reaction time, decrease coordination, increase aggressive and reckless driving, impair cognitive function, or cause drowsiness. All of...

2022 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheet: Motorcycle Safety

Katherine L. Chen
Bor-Wen Tsai
Garrett Fortin
Jill F. Cooper
2022

Crashes involving motorcycles are a major traffic safety concern in the United States. Since motorcyclists are susceptible to injury during crashes, they comprise a disproportionate share of all injured and killed vehicle occupants. In 2020, motorcyclists comprised 14.4 percent of all traffic deaths in the US.

The primary countermeasures used to address this problem include motorcycle helmet laws and other helmet-oriented programs, rider training and licensing programs, vehicle enhancements, including anti-lock braking technology, rider conspicuity programs, campaigns to increase...

2022 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheet: Speed-Related Crashes

Katherine L. Chen
Bor-Wen Tsai
Garrett Fortin
Jill F. Cooper
2022
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 2020, over one in four (29.0 percent) fatalities involved speeding, a rate that increased after plateauing in the late 2010s, following a decline earlier in the decade. 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...

2022 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheet: Pedestrian Safety

Katherine L. Chen
Bor-Wen Tsai
Garrett Fortin
Jill F. Cooper
2022
Everyone is a pedestrian, whether or not walking is one’s primary mode of travel. As a commute mode, walking is gaining in numbers. In 2020, pedestrian deaths accounted for 16.8 percent of all crash fatalities and nearly one-quarter (24.3 percent) of pedestrian fatalities involved a hit-and-run crash. From 2011 to 2020, pedestrian fatalities increased 46.2 percent while other traffic deaths only increased by 14.4 percent. From 2019 to 2020, pedestrian fatalities increased 3.9 percent, despite a 13.2 percent reduction in driving. Compared with all other racial categories, American Indian/...