Welcome
to the
UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center newsletter
This Issue: Occupant Protection
This newsletter was created
by the UC Berkeley Traffic Safety
Center (TSC) to disseminate important information
on traffic safety topics most relevant to communities in California.
The mission of the TSC is to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries
through multi-disciplinary collaboration in education, research, and
outreach. A main goal of the Center is to make traffic safety information
available and accessible to public and private organizations, agencies,
and businesses, and to individuals.
Each issue will focus on
a different area of traffic safety. This
one addresses key aspects of occupant safety, with an emphasis on seat
belt use and child restraints in cars and trucks.
Even with seatbelt use at an all-time high in the U.S. and California, there still remains a significant portion of the population suffering needless deaths and injuries because they are not properly restrained.
In this issue, we examine some of the successful policies to date and we look at the various ways in which California specifically is building on that success.
This issue also TSC News discussions by traffic safety participants at the county, state, and regional levels. Nancy Baer and Wendy Jameson describe a child and infant safety seat outreach program being conducted at public hospital systems in California; Teresa Becher, Interim Director of OTS, discusses state efforts to promote seat belt use; and David Manning, Administrator of NHTSA Region 9, talks about regional and federal programs.
We invite your thoughts and
reactions to the topics presented here. Please use the send-us-your-comments
link at the end of each story and at the bottom of each sidebar
to email us your comments. We hope to include a “letters to the
editor” component in the next issue. If we think your comments
would be appropriate for such a forum, we will contact you about publishing
them.
The TSC newsletter will be
published four times a year. If you wish to be added to the mailing
list or taken off the mailing list, please send an email
to the TSC with "Mailing List" in the subject line and
a message telling us which action to take.
Phyllis Orrick, Publications Director, Institute of Transportation Studies, 510-643-2591
Contributing Editors:
Toni Gantz, Program
Coordinator, Prevention Institute;
Leslie Mikkelsen,
Managing Director, Prevention Institute;
Tammy Wilder, Project
Coordinator, Traffic Safety Center
Editorial Committee:
David Ragland, Director, Traffic Safety Center
Larry Cohen, Director, Prevention Institute
Jill Cooper, Program Manager,
Traffic Safety Center
Theodore E. Cohn, Professor of Vision Science and Bioengineering, UC Berkeley
Send us your comments or email a letter to the editor
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety
This
issue's stories:
Getting America To Buckle Up
Seat belts are still the best way to save lives
Measuring Safety Measures
A new toolkit for local agencies to evaluate their
interventions
Making Child Safety Seats Part of a
Prescription for Good Health
A new initiative brings awareness of their correct use to
hospitals and clinics.
Checkups for Kids—and Their
Car Seats
A Contra Costa County prevention specialist talks about the Child
Passenger Safety Initiative
The "Forgotten
Child" Is Getting Some Attention
at Last
Booster seats now the law in some states
An Interview with
David Manning
Administrator of NHTSA's Region 9
talks about improving occupant safety in California
Teresa Becher on Traffic Safety in California
An interview with the Interim Director of the Office
of Traffic Safety
Other issues of the TSC newsletter
