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Read the latest news and announcements from traffic safety interest groups and about traffic safety topics here.
Distracted driving related to cell phone usage ranks among the top three causes of fatal crashes on the road. Although forty-eight of 50 U.S. states allow the use of personal devices if operated hands-free and secured in the vehicle, scientific studies have yet to quantify the safety improvement presumed to be introduced by voice-to-text interactions. […]
Fully autonomous vehicles, which would carry out many or all of their functions without the intervention of a driver, may someday bring sweeping social and economic changes and “lead to breakthrough gains in transportation safety.” Motor vehicle crashes caused an estimated 36,560 fatalities in 2018; a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) […]
Predictors of future auto and energy forecasts say that by the end of this new decade, electric vehicles could account for half of auto sales in the world. The trends that could lead to those projections include better battery technology and a rising interest in energy efficiency for buses, rideshare vehicles, and electric scooters. Read […]
According to new data, highway fatalities have declined for a second consecutive year following the U.S. Department of Transportation report that 2018’s highway fatalities were down 2.4 percent from a year earlier. The department’s preliminary figures for 2019’s first six months show a further decrease, down 3.4 percent from the same period a year earlier. […]
In 2016, 44 percent of drivers in fatal car crashes (with known results) tested positive for drugs, according to the recent report entitled “Drug-Impaired Driving: Marijuana and Opioids Raise Critical Issues for States” by the Governors Highway Safety Association. This is up from 28 percent in 2006. See a the article below for more information about drugged driving and marijuana […]
In recent years, the number of pedestrian fatalities in the United States has grown sharply. During the 10-year period from 2009 to 2018, the number of pedestrian fatalities increased by 53% (from 4,109 deaths in 2009 to 6,283 deaths in 2018); by comparison, the combined number of all other traffic deaths increased by 2%. Along […]
Traffic safety professionals are tasked with the complexities of finding ways to change behavior. Significant progress has been made in addressing several risky behaviors like not wearing a seat belt and driving aggressively resulting in fewer people engaging in these behaviors. However, a small portion of the population (i.e., about 10 percent) still does not […]
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that despite the recent trend towards higher national seat belt use rates, 10% of drivers still only use seat belts occasionally. The current study examined occasional seat belt use among participants in the Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP2) Naturalistic Driving Study. The study was exploratory research with […]
There are many situations where tacit communication between drivers and pedestrians governs and enhances safety. The goal of this study was to formalize this communication and apply it to the driving strategy of an autonomous vehicle. Toward this, a field study of the interaction between drivers and pedestrians was performed. Vehicles were instrumented to capture […]
In 2008, 292 people were killed and another 18,000 injured when motorists attempted the most dangerous driving stunt permitted outside of a closed-course test track: backing up. Children under age five, who comprise 44% of all backup fatalities, were most likely to pay the price when things went wrong. From the perspective of the engineer, […]
