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Seat belts have been proven to be one of the best ways to save your life in a crash. Yet, many still don’t buckle up. Worse still, not wearing a seat belt is a habit that will pass on to impressionable youth who, in turn, will think it is safe to not buckle up. The Click It […]
The U Drive. U Text. U Pay. high visibility enforcement (HVE) media campaign centers on aiding law enforcement officers in their efforts to keep texting and distracted drivers off the road. Distracted driving is a first offense in many States and continues to gain recognition across the nation as a deadly traffic safety epidemic. Find campaign materials here.
Impaired-driving traffic crashes affect communities negatively across the United States. Previous research confirmed the effectiveness of high-visibility enforcement (HVE) toward reducing impaired-driving fatalities. Read the full publication here.
Hyundai Motor America and Kia America have issued recalls for more than 570,000 vehicles, urging owners to park their vehicles outside and away from homes and other structures until the recall is remedied. The affected vehicles are model years 2022-2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz, 2019-2023 Hyundai Santa Fe, 2021-2023 Santa Fe Hybrid, 2022-2023 Santa Fe Plug-in Hybrid, and 2022-2023 […]
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today released its early estimates of traffic fatalities for the first half of 2022. An estimated 20,175 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, an increase of about 0.5% as compared to 20,070 fatalities NHTSA projected for the first half of 2021. However, NHTSA projects that the second quarter of […]
Distracted driving is a major contributor to crashes. In 2020, there were 3,142 lives lost to crashes involving distracted driving (Stewart, 2022). Countermeasures that aim to reduce distracted driving exist, such as laws, enforcement campaigns, outreach, and programs for adult and teen drivers (Venkatraman et al., 2021). However, these typically target the drivers themselves; few […]
For this fact sheet, urban boundaries are determined by the State highway departments and approved by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and the areas outside of those boundaries are described as rural. The State highway departments use the boundaries decided by the Census Bureau. Read the full study here.
The COVID-19 pandemic, mitigation efforts such as stay-at-home orders, and ensuing trends such as the rise in working from home, have had substantial impacts on traffic. In March, NHTSA reported that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) decreased 11% from 2019 to 2020, while police-reported crashes decreased 22%. However, fatalities per 100 million VMT increased 21% from […]
Occupant protection discussed in this fact sheet includes seat belts, car seats for those under 5, and frontal air bags in passenger vehicles. Passenger vehicles consist of passenger cars and light trucks (pickups, SUVs, and vans) with gross vehicle weight ratings (GVWRs) of 10,000 pounds or less. Vehicle occupants include drivers and passengers. Read the […]
In the context of pedestrian and bicyclist safety, the theory of Jacobsen’s 2003 “ Safety in Numbers” (SIN) posits an inverse relationship between the extent of walking and bicycling and the probability of motorist collisions with pedestrians and bicyclists. A literature review was conducted to summarize the state of research on SIN and identify potential […]