Safety

We All Want the Same Thing Results from a Roadway Design Survey of Pedestrians, Drivers, Bicyclists, and Transit Users in the Bay Areav

Sanders, Rebecca L.
Cooper, Jill F.
2012

Pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers, and public transit users all desire similar roadway design features, at least according to findings from a recent intercept survey of 537 people along a major urban corridor in the San Francisco Bay Area. This research was sponsored by the California Department of Transportation to understand traveler preferences for street design that could increase perceived traffic safety, walkability, and bikability along urban arterials, as well as encourage economic vitality through increased patronage of local businesses. In an open-ended question about street...

Oakland Chinatown Pedestrian Scramble: An Evaluation

Bechtel, Allyson K
MacLeod, Kara E.
Ragland, David R.
2003

In 2002, the City of Oakland, California implemented a scramble signal, at the intersection of 8th Street and Webster Street. Scrambles are a type of traffic signal that give pedestrians exclusive access to an intersection by stopping vehicular traffic on all approaches, allowing pedestrians to cross diagonally or conventionally. The primary objective of this evaluation was to determine whether the installation of the pedestrian scramble at this location increased pedestrian safety. An analysis was conducted of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts and pedestrian violations occurring at the...

Collaboration Math: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Multidisciplinary Collaboration

Cohen, Larry
Aboeleta, Manal
Gantz, Toni
Van Wert, Jennifer
2003

Reducing the toll of traffic-related injuries requires a concerted effort, calling on the resources, commitment and expertise of diverse agencies, professionals and community members. Traffic safety is affected by numerous aspects of community life such as how neighborhoods are designed, how fast cars travel and how safe people feel walking or driving to key destinations. Preventing traffic-related injury is a responsibility shared by many. As evidenced by many federal, state and local efforts, partnerships, coalitions and networks have become common ways to address the incidence of...

Teens and Driving in California: Summary of Research and Best Practices

Bui, Huong
Arnold, Lindsay S.
Cooper, Jill F.
Ragland, David R.
2006

The purpose of this guide is to present the major risk factors associated with teen driving in California and to highlight policy and program strategies that may be influential in reducing risk.

Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Effects of the California Safe Routes to School Program

Gutierrez, Nicolas
Orenstein, Marla
Cooper, Jill
Rice, Thomas
Ragland, David R.
2008

In the last decade, there has been an increased focus in California on encouraging children to walk and bicycle to school safely. In 1999, the California Legislature created the Safe Routes to School (SR2S) program, authorizing issuance of a competitive grant process for roadway construction projects. There has been an overall decline in the numbers of child pedestrian/bicyclist collisions in California as a whole. When compared with the control areas, the SR2S project areas did not show a greater decline in numbers of collisions. However, it is likely that the number of children walking/...

Pilot Models for Estimating Bicycle Intersection Volumes

Griswold, Julia B.
Medury, Aditya
Schneider, Robert J.
2011

Bicycle volume data are useful to practitioners and researchers to understand safety, travel behavior, and development impacts. This paper describes the methodology used to develop several simple models of bicycle intersection volumes in Alameda County, California. The models are based on two-hour bicycle counts performed at a sample of 81 intersections in the Spring of 2008 and 2009. Study sites represented areas with a wide range of population density, employment density, proximity to commercial property, neighborhood income, and street network characteristics. The explanatory variables...

Safe Routes to School Local School Project: A health evaluation at 10 low-income schools

Cooper, Jill F., MSW
McMillan, Tracy PhD
2010

Routes to School National Partnership (Partnership) founded the Local School Project (Project) in 2008 to assist ten schools in lowincome communities to: 1) develop and evaluate a school-based SRTS program, 2) build local capacity to apply for state or federal SRTS funding, and 3) increase safe walking and bicycling to and from the school and in the community. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kaiser Permanente, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided funding for the Project.This report presents the results, lessons learned and recommendations identified during the...

Evaluation of the California Child Passenger Safety Initiative

Cooper, Jill F.
MacLeod, Kara E.
Ragland, David R.
2004

Motor vehicle injuries are a leading cause of injury and fatality to children. Child restraint systems can reduce injury, and their use has been a long-time focus of policy and programmatic work. During this time, there has been a marked increase in the number of children restrained in vehicles and a steady decline in vehicle-related injuries and fatalities to children. However, data reveal that children of color, compared to white children, are at greater risk of injury in motor vehicle crashes. To address needs of “the children left behind” from safety advances, the California Child...

Single-Vehicle Fatal Crash Prediction for Two-Lane Rural Highways in the Southeastern United States

Zhu, Hong
Dixon, Karen K.
Washington, Simon
Jared, David M.
2010

The rural two-lane highway in the Southeastern United States is frequently associated with a disproportionate number of serious and fatal crashes and as such remains a focus of considerable safety research. The Georgia Department of Transportation spearheaded a regional fatal crash analysis to identify various safety performances on two-lane rural highways and offer guidance for identifying suitable countermeasures to mitigate fatal crashes. The fatal crash data used in this study were compiled from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The database, developed for an earlier...

Automated Assessment of Safety-Critical Dynamics in Multi-modal Transportation Systems

Medury, Aditya
Yu, Mengqiao
Bourdais, Cedric
Grembek, Offer
2016

With the advent of emerging technologies, urban intersections are being increasingly equipped with various types of video-based and in-pavement sensing systems to facilitate round-the-clock monitoring and optimization of multi-modal flows. In comparison, the assessment of the safety performance of these facilities continues to be largely based on either crash history or citizen grievances. Herein lies an opportunity to apply advanced sensing platforms to proactively monitor safety-critical events of multi-modal road users. This work presents a traffic safety monitoring framework which...