Safe System

Evaluating Research on Data Linkage to Assess Underreporting of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Injury in Police Crash Data

Doggett, Sarah
Ragland, David R.
Felschundneff, Grace
2018

Traffic safety decisions are based predominantly on information from police collision reports. However, a number of studies suggest that such reports tend to underrepresent bicycle and pedestrian collisions. Underreporting could lead to inaccurate evaluation of crash rates and may under- or overestimate the effects of road safety countermeasures. This review examined ten studies that used data linkage to explore potential underreporting of pedestrian and/or bicyclist injury in police collision reports. Due to variations in definitions of reporting level, periods of study, and study...

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and the California EMS Information System (CEMSIS) Working Paper

Doggett, Sarah
Ragland, David R.
Felschundneff, Grace
2019

This study examines data from the California EMS Information System (CEMSIS) to identify factors that influence prehospital time for EMS events related to motor vehicle collisions (MVCs). While only 19 percent of the United States population resides in rural areas, over half of all traffic fatalities involve rural motor vehicle collisions. Rural and urban MVCs result in similar injury severities, however relative inaccessibility of trauma centers and prehospital EMS time (activation, response, and transport time) likely contribute to the generally higher mortality rate in rural areas...

Prehospital Response Time and Traumatic Injury—A Review

Doggett, Sarah
Ragland, David R.
Felschundneff, Grace
2018

A significant proportion of fatalities from motor vehicle collisions (MVC) could be prevented through better emergency medical service (EMS) care. Despite a lack of conclusive research, there is a consensus that prehospital time (the time between the MVC and the patient’s arrival at the hospital) must be reduced as much as possible. Many studies use response time (the time between EMS dispatch and arrival at the scene) as an indicator of overall prehospital time and a metric of EMS performance. However, there are other components of prehospital time that may be equally important, including...

Reflections on the 2019 Safe Systems Summit: Redefining Transportation Safety

June 7, 2019

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...

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 ...

Register Now for the CSCRS Safe Systems Summit, April 23-24

February 20, 2019
Safe Systems Summit Banner

Interested in learning more about what the Safe Systems approach is to road safety? Register now for the Safe Systems Summit: Redefining Transportation Safety, which will be held in Durham, North Carolina, from April 23-24, 2019. This event is presented by the Collaborative...

New Publication: Diffusing innovative road safety practice

February 1, 2019

As another month begins, we are excited to announce another SafeTREC publication!

SafeTREC co-director Jill Cooper has co-authored a study published in the Journal of Traffic Injury Prevention, titled “Diffusing innovative road safety practice: A social network approach to identifying opinion leading U.S. cities” with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers Seth LaJeunesse, Stephen Heiny, Kelly Evenson, and Lisa Fiedler. The study, funded by the...