HSRC receives two awards for outstanding transportation research

(Left to Right) Robert E. Skinner, Jr.; TRB, Jane Stutts; HSRC, Richard D. Blomberg; Dunlap and Associates, Inc., Lauren Marchetti; HSRC, Martin Levy; NHTSA, Charles Zegeer; HSRC, Yingling Fan; University of Minnesota, Libby Thomas; HSRC, Austin Brown; HSRC, Laura Sandt; HSRC, David Henderson; Miami-Dade Office of the County Manager, Robert Johns; University of Minnesota CTS.

(Left to Right) Robert E. Skinner, Jr.; TRB, Nancy Lefler; VHB, Frank Gross; VHB, Forrest Council; HSRC, Bhagwant Persaud; Ryerson University, Craig Lyon; Ryerson University, Robert Johns; University of Minnesota CTS. Not pictured Raghavan Srinivasan, HSRC.

Researchers from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center have received two of the six awards given by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) for outstanding published research in transportation safety. The Patricia F. Waller Award and the D. Grant Mickle Award were presented to Center researchers on January 13, 2009, at the 88th Annual TRB Meeting in Washington, DC. Award winners were selected from approximately 2800 submitted papers from around the world.

"Evaluation of the Miami-Dade Pedestrian Safety Demonstration Program" received the 2008 Patricia F. Waller Award for the outstanding paper in the field of safety and system users. The study aimed to implement a comprehensive program to reduce pedestrian deaths and injuries in a large urban environment. Results of the program showed that the pedestrian safety program reduced countywide pedestrian crash rates by between 8.5 percent and 13.3 percent, depending on which control group was used.

Study authors include Charles V. Zegeer, Scott Vincent Masten, Lauren Marchetti, Laura S. Sandt, Austin Brown, Jane Stutts, and Libby J. Thomas, of the UNC Highway Safety Research Center; Richard D. Blomberg of Dunlap and Associates, Inc., Connecticut; David Henderson of the Miami-Dade Office of the County Manager; Martin M. Levy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; and Yingling Fan of the University of Minnesota.

"Safety-Effectiveness of Selected Treatments at Urban Signalized Intersections" received the D. Grant Mickle Award for the outstanding paper in the field of operation, safety, and maintenance of transportation facilities. In the study, researchers conducted a before-and-after evaluation of four types of treatments at signalized intersections. Results indicated that changing to protected left-turn phasing from permissive or permissive-protected phasing could lead to a virtual elimination of left-turn crashes.

The authors of the paper are Raghavan Srinivasan and Forrest M. Council, of the UNC Highway Safety Research Center; Frank Gross, and Nancy X. Lefler, of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina; and Craig Lyon and Bhagwant Persaud, of Ryerson University, Ontario, Canada.

"Evaluation of the Miami-Dade Pedestrian Safety Demonstration Program" will be published in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2084. For more information on the NHTSA-funded study Evaluation of the Miami-Dade Pedestrian Safety Demonstration Program, please download the final report (PDF 5.4 MB).

"Safety-Effectiveness of Selected Treatments at Urban Signalized Intersections" has been published in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2056. For more information on this study, please visit http://www.trb.org/news/blurb_detail.asp?id=8965.

The Patricia F. Waller Award was established in 2004 in memory of Waller, a UNC professor who worked for nearly two decades as a researcher at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center. The D. Grant Mickle Award was established in 1976 and honors the fifth executive director of TRB.