Crosswalk
Study: This summer the Traffic Safety Center conducted
a Crosswalk Study in Berkeley (see photo at left) that is part of a
larger effort to determine the relative importance of behavior (driver
and pedestrian) and crosswalk design in contributing to crosswalk crashes
involving pedestrians. More
on ongoing Pedestrian Safety Research>>
Pedestrian
Safety and Roadway Design
In the 2005-2006 academic year, the Traffic Safety Center hosted on separate occasions pedestrian safety expert Charles V. Zegeer, and two leaders in safety assessment methods for road designs, Jake Kononov and Bryan Allery.
Zegeer is Associate Director of the University of North Carolina’s Highway Safety Research Center and director of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. He has written numerous reports, including the Federal Highway Administration’s Pedestrian Facility User’s Guide and the 2004 edition of its Annual Review of Pedestrian Safety Research.
Kononov and Allery are engineers with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), who have written and spoken extensively on methods that they have devised and deployed to better measure roadway safety that are more transparent and easier to implement.
In this issue, we present reports on their presentations and their findings:
Putting Safety into Road Planning—a New Diagnostic Approach: Visitors from the Colorado DOT discuss their system to address safety in roadway design—a Traffic Safety Seminar presentation
When Crosswalks Work—and When They Don't: Charles Zegeer discusses his study on marked vs. unmarked crossings.
Walking the Walk: An Interview with Pedestrian Safety Expert Charles Zegeer
Additionally, the end of the academic year marks graduation for many of our student researchers. We report on this year's class here:
Traffic Safety Center Salutes New Graduates:The Traffic Safety Center congratulates six students affiliated with TSC projects who received graduate degrees in 2006.
And the annual roundup of papers presented at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, 2006.
TSC at TRB: Links to papers and presentations by our researchers at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2006
Finally, this issue of the newsletter marks a slight change in approach: now that the Traffic Safety Center has developed a substantial track record of achievement in its five-plus years of existence, we are finding it important to communicate more about the Center's work. While the newsletter will continute to bring its readers news of the highest caliber traffic safety research, it will often be through the prism of the Center's own activities, in order to keep readers informed of what we are doing here.
As always, we welcome your comments.