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Read the latest news and announcements from traffic safety interest groups and about traffic safety topics here.
Autonomous vehicles are currently subject to a lot of hope, hype and hysteria, especially after the recent fatality in Arizona, when a pedestrian was struck and killed by one of Uber’s self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles will likely have as significant an impact on our lives as electricity, computers and the internet all did. However, just like […]
Tesla Inc on Thursday unveiled its first electric pickup truck that looked like a futuristic angular armored vehicle in gunmetal gray, as the California company took aim at the heart of Detroit automakers’ profits. At a launch event in Los Angeles, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said the Cybertruck will have a starting price of […]
Rear Belt Use Lower in For-Hire Vehicles Each year, hundreds of unbelted passengers in the back seat of motor vehicles are killed in crashes. New federal data reveal that, in 2018 alone, 803 unrestrained rear seat passengers age eight and up lost their lives; more than 400 of them may be alive today had they […]
This report makes specific recommendations on how states and other stakeholders can and should save lives by increasing rear seat belt use by adults: States should pass and enforce strong laws and publicize the benefits of belt use in all seating situations; Fir-hire vehicle services should actively promote belt use to their passengers; Vehicle manufacturers […]
This manual is the latest version of the FARS coding manual for the period 1982 to 2018, covering auxiliary datasets.
Safety is paramount in the work we do at the Alabama Department of Transportation. It begins with our pre-construction process, where we plan and design the safest roads and bridges possible. Whether it’s planning for new construction, replacing functionally obsolete or structurally deficient bridges, or widening shoulders scored with rumble strips on rural resurfacing projects, […]
From 2009 to 2018 fatalities in motor vehicle traffic crashes increased 8 percent overall. The trend of the increase over the last decade is seen in Figure 1. Pedestrian fatalities increased 53 percent during this time. In 2009 pedestrians accounted for 12 percent of all crash fatalities. This increased at varying rates, averaging 4 percent […]
There were 36,560 people killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes on U.S. roadways during 2018, a 2.4-percent decrease from 37,473 in 2017, which came after a 0.9- percent decrease from 2016 to 2017. Prior to 2016 there were two back-to-back yearly increases of 8.4 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. Fatalities decreased from 2017 to 2018 […]
As part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) mission to help Americans drive, ride, and walk safely, the agency is urging consumers to avoid using or purchasing car seats for their child that do not meet federal safety standards. On October 29, 2019, a concerned pediatrician alerted NHTSA about […]
This document contains examples of water buildup locations on mileposted and non-mileposted roadways. While these examples may be used by some statewide agencies (e.g., ALEA and ALDOT) to address potential problems that could either be fixed or mitigated by enforcement, they also have value in training of local agencies. This training should include instruction on […]
