Tag: road safety

How to argue with a traffic engineer about speed limits
It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually a valid question: How do you argue effectively with a traffic engineer? For safety-conscious civilians, certain elements of traffic design are especially confusing. When infrastructure blog Strong Towns recently asked for reader submitted questions, an interesting question came from Adam of Miami, FL, who […]

Smoking marijuana’s legal in Colorado, but not while driving
On January 1, 2014, Colorado legalized marijuana. While many have welcomed the move, others fear that DUI accidents will rise. What is the state doing to ensure that doesn’t happen? For starters, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has given a $400,000 grant to Colorado. The state’s law enforcement officials plan to use the […]

Charting traffic fatalities: New York’s deadliest neighborhoods
A Pratt University statistics professor has used 2013 data on crashes and fatalities to map out New York City’s most traffic-dangerous neighborhoods. The heat map highlights challenges faced by the city’s new Vision Zero Action Plan, which aims to reduce traffic fatalities to zero in a city especially troubled by traffic-related injury and death. According […]

Is your state one of the 11 most dangerous to drive in?
Eleven states dangerously lack basic safety regulations, according to a recently released report on highway safety. As the Washington Post notes, a new report from Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety revealed that 11 states earned a red rating, indicating “poor protections.” On the other hand, ten states (plus D.C.) received a green rating, and the […]
![Tvilight, the next big energy efficiency innovator [Interview] Tvilight, the next big energy efficiency innovator [Interview]](http://www.roadtrafficsigns.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tvilight-1-150x150.jpg)
Tvilight, the next big energy efficiency innovator [Interview]
A city may spend up to 50% of its electricity costs on keeping streetlights on, even when there is no one on the road. The result? Bright streets… and an immense waste of energy and funds that would likely be better used elsewhere. Enter the Tvilight zone: a Dutch company’s sensing streetlight system, known as […]

Should you bother buying a personal breathalyzer?
Nearly all U.S. states have a standard .08 blood alcohol content (BAC) limit in place for drivers. Driving drunk can have life-changing consequence, from injury and death to arrest and skyrocketing insurance premiums. For some drivers, a personal breath analyzer (often known by the brand name, Breathalyzer) may help increase safety on the road. As most […]

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 […]

Motorcyclist fatality sheds light on dangers of moose crossings
A motorcyclist was killed, and his passenger left in critical condition, after hitting a moose crossing Alaska’s Glenn Highway last week. As unusual as the accident may sound to urban dwellers, vehicle accidents involving moose are relatively common in Alaska, which has a high population of both moose and motorcyclists. In fact, Alaska has more […]

New regs needed for single-unit trucks?
After analyzing a five-year-long study which discovered that single-unit trucks were involved in an inordinate amount of fatalities, The National Transportation Safety Board has assembled a host of safety recommendations that, if heeded, will affect highway safety for all drivers who share the road. For the uninitiated, single-unit trucks are considered large trucks with a […]