Road safety
Oregon DOT lays down bike traffic signals best practices
Last month, the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration released guidance for bike traffic signals in the U.S. in an extensive report titled “Operational Guidance for Bicycle-Specific Traffic Signals in the United States,” and prepared with the aid of the Portland State University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The researchers’ objectives […]
How loud can my vehicle be?
The law isn’t always loud and clear when it comes to legal noise levels for vehicles. In fact, legal levels vary by area, just as enforcement methods vary, too. What passes for whispering in some big cities might be construed as a shout in a rural area; and the same goes for car exhausts, mufflers, […]
How your car’s color affects your insurance – and safety
Car convention has long dictated that insurance rates are higher for red cars; and, at first blush, the urban legend seems to make good sense. After all, aren’t flashy red Corvettes are more likely to draw attention, and therefore the eye of traffic cops? And aren’t cherry red roadsters are easier to see, and thus […]
Federal government to screen for truckers with sleep disorders
The federal government has been tightening regulations on commercial drivers for some time, and now they’re tackling the issue of drivers with sleep disorders. Under HR 3095, a bill which President Obama signed in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown, the Federal Motor Carrying Service Administration (FMCSA) must use a full rulemaking proceeding for a new […]
Bridge suicides prompt lifesaving barriers
For people in the throes of mental disturbance or difficult life situations, bridge suicides often look like accessible, fatal solutions. Advocates say that bridge suicides often occur as a result of impulse and accessibility — one of which can be prevented with deterrents, such as bridge barriers. Take San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, where over […]
Digital safety signs mean a traffic engineer has given up
We’re delighted to be joined by Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns for this post. You’re driving down an open road you travel every day, thinking more about your work, your kids or what awaits you at your destination than your surroundings. You don’t notice the cones or the construction signs, but when the big digital safety […]
Oklahoma bucks national trend of falling drunk driving deaths
Although U.S. alcohol-related deaths fell by around 20 percent over the last twenty years, Oklahoma experienced a 10 percent rise in drunk driving deaths during the same period. Considering the state has about the same vehicles, intensive public education campaigns, and tough drunk driving laws as the rest of the nation, it’s unclear why drunk […]
Over 1/3 of 2011 child crash fatalities were without car seats or seatbelts
As Child Passenger Safety Week (September 15 through September 21) draws to a close, the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA is drawing attention to a shocking statistic: Over a third of children under age 13 who were killed in 2011 in passenger vehicle crashes were not sitting in car seats or […]
Rural car accidents may prove more fatal
A recent investigation into 10 years of car accident data provided by the Colorado Department of Transportation suggests that accidents occurring in rural areas are more fatal than those occurring in more urban zones. The investigation, led by I-News at Rocky Mountain PBS, analyzed the decade of traffic fatality information and contrasted it with the […]
Charles Marohn on traffic safety
We don’t often just quote at length verbatim around here – OK, we do, but we don’t like to. Anyway, I just ran into this insightful section on traffic safety from Charles Marohn’s blog on Strong Towns with which to send you along grimacing to your weekend: — An engineer designing a street or road […]
