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Walking, biking, and other sustainable modes of transportation are critical options in communities throughout the United States, particularly for economically disadvantaged communities. However, fatalities among pedestrians and bicyclists have been increasing even faster than the overall fatalities among all road users, which has drawn a focus on the safety of vulnerable road users (defined below). […]
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has taken the first step toward making impaired-driving prevention technology standard in new passenger vehicles. The Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that NHTSA is announcing today helps fulfill a requirement in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and supports the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy. Read the full article here.
NHTSA has recently issued a projection report of traffic fatalities and the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for the first half of 2023 (Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (Jan–Jun) of 2023, Report No. DOT HS 813 514). That report shows an estimated 19,515 people died […]
A new report from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), with the support of State Farm®, examines traffic safety cameras – an underutilized tool in the fight to reduce dangerous driving behaviors that contribute to more than 100 people dying on U.S. roads every day. The report discusses the benefits of traffic safety cameras that […]
The crash performance of roadside safety hardware, such as guardrails, is typically evaluated using full-scale crash tests with vehicles striking the device in representative worst-case impact scenarios. Each test is evaluated based on vehicle response, device response, and potential for injury to vehicle occupants. Read the full report here.
In 2023, the Technologist in Communities (TIC) program hosted its inaugural scanning tour across the American Southwest, with a goal of investigating the region’s leading public mobility systems and their integration with on-demand public mobility services. The scanning tour concept was inspired by and named after a U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration practice […]
Communication campaigns are among the most widely used efforts to promote traffic safety and can be used to promote safe driving practices and knowledge of traffic laws, and otherwise educate the public. One way campaigns could be improved is to use behavior change theory in campaign development. Behavior change theories are developed to explain and […]
A statistical projection of traffic fatalities for the first half of 2023 shows an estimated 19,515 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, a decrease of about 3.3 percent as compared to 20,190 fatalities projected to have occurred in the first half of 2022, as shown in Table 1. The second quarter of 2023 represents […]
This project aimed to determine if excessive device use while driving is the result of an addiction, why this behavior persists, and what countermeasures to consider. This Traffic Tech briefly summarizes it. Reviewers consulted academic, government, and private-sector material from several disciplines including human factors, traffic safety, psychology, and demography. More than 270 sources were […]
Young drivers are nearly four times more likely to be involved in a fatal traffic crash than their older counterparts, but a GHSA report confirms that crash and fatality rates for drivers under 21 have improved drastically over the past two decades – more so than for other drivers. The report includes an analysis of […]