Safe System

California Safe System Institute for Road Safety

California Safe System Institute for Road Safety

Principles and elements of the Safe System approach to road safety

The UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) is excited to announce the inaugural cohort of the California Safe System Institute for Road Safety (Institute). The Institute is a Safe...

California Traffic Safety Survey 2022

Ewald, Katrin
Wasserman, Lisa
2022

Ewald & Wasserman Research (E&W) conducted the 2022 California Traffic Safety Public Opinion Study on behalf of the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) and the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center of UC Berkeley (SafeTREC). Similar to previous years and since 2020, the data collection transitioned from an intercept survey to an online panel with survey panelists provided by Marketing Services Group, a commercial sample and panel vendor.

Panelists consisted of California drivers who were forwarded to an online survey portal programmed and managed by E&W...

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 ...

April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month

April 17, 2026
Submitted by Kris Leckie
In 2024 alone, 3,208 people were killed and 315,167 people were injured in traffic crashes involving distracted drivers. Every April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) holds Distracted Driving Awareness Month to remind road users to focus on the road and not drive distracted.

...

The 2026 CSSA Peer Exchange Series launches this month!

April 6, 2026
Submitted by Kris Leckie
UC Berkeley SafeTREC is excited to announce our 2026 virtual two-part Peer Exchange series: “Advancing safety through the CSSA.” The series, part of the Complete Streets Safety Assessment (CSSA) program, will feature two former participant communities as they reflect on their experiences with the program – from their initial application to the real-world safety impacts of their comprehensive safety reports.

...

Conducting Community Engagement with a Safe System Lens

Katherine L. Chen
Jill F. Cooper
2021

Introduction

Over 3,600 people died in traffic crashes in California in 2019; more than one in four people who died was a pedestrian or bicyclist (NHTSA). The burden of death and injury is unequally distributed - based on mode type, on race and ethnicity, and on income - as a consequence of historic and structurally inequitable funding and policy decisions (Archer, Sandt, Santana). Our current road network is a dichotomy of areas that connect people to things they need and underserved communities with restricted mobility. The Safe System approach offers...

Peer Influence and Perceptions of Safety

Aqshems Nichols
Jill F. Cooper
2022

At the heart of active transportation systems are the people. This brief discusses the importance of considering perceptions in traffic safety analyses and discusses the potential for investigating how a psychological phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance could be shaping those perceptions. A couple of case studies from the psychology literature are discussed to facilitate this discussion. It is hoped that this brief can be employed to learn more about how to improve the safety of using active modes both in California and across the nation.

Impact of the Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training Program: Insights from the 2022 Follow-Up Survey

Aqshems Nichols
Chen, Katherine L.
Jill F. Cooper
2022

The Community Pedestrian Bicycle Safety Training (CPBST) program is a collaborative project between UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) and California Walks (Cal Walks) that seeks to assist communities with three goals:

Identifying and better understanding their local transportation safety needs; Developing and strengthening local partnerships between various stakeholders in their community; and Generating a community-specific action plan for improving the safety of active transportation in their area.

These objectives are pursued through...

2022 SafeTREC Traffic Safety Fact Sheet: Alcohol-Impaired Driving

Katherine L. Chen
Bor-Wen Tsai
Garrett Fortin
Jill F. Cooper
2022
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 2020, someone died from an alcohol-impaired driving crash every 45 minutes. There was an increase in the number of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities and rate per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) in the United States between 2019 and 2020.

The United States Department of Transportation uses the Safe System Approach to work towards zero roadway...