Policy

Similarly to the US, driving a car to work continues to gain ground in Ireland and the country is presented with major challenges in environment and health as a consequence. In safety, at least, Ireland has had some major successes. In 40 years, the number of fatalities has fallen from 640 to 162, a drop of 75%. Such improvements in road safety have been attributed to a combination of education, enforcement and engineering. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities have each fallen by 66% in 20 years, however, this could be attributed to the lower numbers of people walking and cycling....

This paper presents a new method for forecasting cyclist volume and route choice based on space syntax techniques for urban analysis. Space syntax has been shown to correlate strongly with pedestrian and vehicular trips in a number of international studies, but little research to date has focused on the role of urban form and street network design in cyclist route choice. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing the distribution of cycling trips in the central London area, focusing on a sample of work-based commuting trips. A sample of 423 cyclists from 50 organizations was combined with...

Rail crossing crashes have declined in the past 30 years, both nationally and in California. This is largely attributed to the closing of a large number of crossings as well as the deployment of a wide range of countermeasures, including signal systems, gating and grade separation programs. However, the number of crashes and subsequent injuries and deaths is still unacceptably high. Rail crossings provide different levels of warnings from four-quadrant gates down to stop signs. To understand how the state of California can best utilize state and federal funding available through SAFETEA-LU...

With the increasing prevalence of mobile technology and high-profile crashes bringing attention to distracted driving, data on cell phone involvement in collisions is critical for understanding the extent of the problem, examining the effectiveness of policies, and developing interventions to improve safety. Some limitations of existing data have been previously identified, but this paper examines the specific case of California’s collision data. Temporal, geographic, and jurisdictional trends are analyzed to identify the source and type of inconsistencies in the cell phone involvement...