UNC HSRC

DIRECTIONS

Volume 2018, Issue 1
HSRC building

News Briefs

HSRC welcomes new staff members

HSRC is proud to announce the following additions to our research and project management teams:

Courtney Blake

Courtney Blake first joined the Highway Safety Research Center as a student in June 2011. She became an Administrative Support Specialist in December 2017. Her administrative duties include: assisting project managers with center activities, processing vouchers, purchase orders, journal entries, travel reimbursements, maintaining service contracts, and coordinating telecommunications needs and other office business duties as needed.

Learn more about Courtney here.

Marie Melendez

Marie Melendez joined HSRC in February 2018 as a Communications Specialist. She is responsible for producing communications materials, coordinating and managing special events, social media efforts, and managing website content for HSRC and its national programs (National Center for Safe Routes to School, the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety, Highway Information System, Bike to School Day, and Walk to School Day).

Learn more about Marie here.

Sarah O'Brien

Sarah O’Brien joined HSRC in 2018 as a Senior Research Associate. She has over ten years of experience in non-motorized planning, education, policy, design, and research. Her primary focus is conducting research and providing technical assistance to practitioners to improve walking and bicycling within communities. She has experience collecting field data such as volume, speed, and user profiles and behaviors and has conducted controlled and naturalistic observational studies.

Learn more about Sarah here.

Recent Center highlights

Road to Zero Grant Awarded to HSRC and America Walks

On March 20, America Walks, in partnership with HSRC, was selected to receive one of the 2018 Road to Zero grants awarded by the National Safety Council. This grant will be used to fund and implement a new technical assistance program focusing on pedestrian safety in small and mid-size cities. Selected communities will receive assistance in assessing, planning, and prioritizing effective and context-sensitive safety treatments to reduce the growing numbers of pedestrian fatalities and injuries. The results of this technical assistance will be shared after a year of implementation by America Walks, HSRC, and other partners. An outline of lessons learned will also be shared to cultivate inspiration for other cities looking to address pedestrian safety.

The work on this project will launch later this year.

Road to Zero is an initiative by the National Safety Council, in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Its aim is to eliminate traffic fatalities, through a coordinated effort, by 2050.

CSCRS Safety Data Clearinghouse, Phase I: Inventory & Framework

HSRC staff in collaboration with UCB have begun work to create an online CSCRS centralized data clearinghouse for bicycle and pedestrian safety-related data. The goal of the first phase of this project, led by Senior Research Associate, Krista Nordback, and Research Associate, Seth LaJeunesse, is to create an online clearinghouse of data needed for bike and pedestrian safety analysis research. This would include mapping existing online databases by location and data type and identifying the gaps in the types of safety data readily available to researchers, creating a prioritized framework for the CSCRS online pedestrian and bicycle safety data resource clearinghouse. In addition to the prioritized framework, this work will result in an online safety data resources page and a pilot online database (the specific data type is yet to be selected) to start to fill an identified data gap.

Sign up for the CSCRS Crossroads newsletter to learn more about this and other CSCRS projects and activities.

Coordinating Road Safety Reviews with Bike & Pedestrian Project Prioritization

This report summarizes the development of the North Carolina Pedestrian and Bicycle Road Safety Assessment Guide, for use by North Carolina agencies to improve the safety project development process. Libby Thomas, the principal investigator, led a team of six HSRC researchers to develop the content of the guide, which aims to foster an inter-agency collaborative and data-driven approach to identify pedestrian and bicycle safety problems, diagnose problems through road safety assessments (RSAs), identify potential countermeasures, and document the results in RSA reports. The RSA report can be used as a detailed plan for longer-range safety project development and to identify more immediate safety improvements such as signal timing changes, re-channelization, or enhanced enforcement.

HSRC publications and presentations

HSRC researchers and staff regularly publish findings in peer-reviewed journals and present research results at professional meetings and trade conferences in the fields of transportation, safety, research and public health. Below is a list of recent presentations and publications.

To browse additional recent HSRC publications, click here.

Anarkooli , A.J., Hosseinpour, M., Persaud, B., & Saleem, T. (2018, January). Development and evaluation of a two-stage modeling approach for estimating crash frequency for horizontal curves on two-lane rural roads (TRB Paper 18-06609). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Blackburn, L., Zegeer, C., & Brookshire, K. (2018, January). Guide to improving pedestrian safety at uncontrolled crossing locations (Report FHWA-SA-17-072). Washington, D.C.: Federal Highway Administration.

Carter, D.L. (2017, October). Wrong way driving in North Carolina. Presented at the NCDOT Safety and Operations Roundtable Meeting, Raleigh, NC.

Carter, D.L., Gelinne, D., Kirley, B., Sundstrom, C., Srinivasan, R., & Palcher-Silliman, J. (2017, November). Road safety fundamentals: Concepts, strategies, and practices that reduce fatalities and injuries on the road (Report FHWA-SA-18-003). Washington, D.C.: Federal Highway Administration Office of Safety.

Carter, D.L. (2017, November). Resources for road safety professionals. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Section of the Institute for Transportation Engineers, Raleigh, NC.

Carter, D.L. (2017, November). Identifying vertical curves using SHRP2 RID data. Remotely presented to the SHRP2 Safety Data Oversight Committee, Washington, DC.

Carter, D.L., Hunter, W., & Signor, K. (2018, March). Strategies to reduce wrong way movements (Report FHWA-NC-2017-12). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation Research and Analysis Group.

Foss, R.D. (2017, December 13). Reducing teen driver crashes with an effective driver licensing system. Testimony to Ohio House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Public Safety.

Foss, R.D. (2017, December). Windfall! Gains in teen driver safety remain readily available to most states. Western Pacific Injury Prevention Network Webinar.

Granados, M., Persaud, B., Rajeswaran, T., & Saleem, T. (2018, January). Using microsimulation to evaluate the impact of automated vehicles on safety performance of signalized intersections (TRB Paper 18-05956). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Johnstone D., Nordback, K., & Lowry, M. (2017, September). Collecting network-wide bicycle and pedestrian data: Guidebook for when and where to count (Report WA-RD 875.2). Olympia, WA: Washington State Department of Transportation.

Johnstone, D., Nordback, K., & Kothuri, S. (2018, January). Annual average non-motorized traffic estimates from manual counts: Quantifying error (TRB Paper 18-05290). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Johnstone, D., Nordback, K., & Kothuri, S. (2018). Annual average non-motorized traffic estimates from manual counts: Quantifying error. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board. Forthcoming.

Lan, B., Srinivasan, R., Carter, D., Persaud, B., & Eccles, K. (2018, January). Safety evaluation of cable median barriers in combination with rumble strips on divided roads (TRB Paper 18-03788). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Lococo , K.H., Staplin, L., Mastromatto, T., Brooks, J.O., Srinivasan, R., & Sifrit, K.J. (2017, July). Older-driver foot movements (Report DOT HS 812 431). Washington, DC.: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Nordback , K., Sellinger, M., & Phillips, T. (2017, March). Estimating walking and bicycling at the state level (Report NITC-RR-708). Portland, OR: National Institute for Transportation and Communities.

Nordback, K., & Kothuri, S. (2017, August). Pedestrian and bicycle counting. [Workshop]. Institute of Transportation Engineers, Toronto, Canada.

Nordback, K., Johnstone, D., & Kothuri, S. (2017, December). Optimizing short duration bicycle and pedestrian counting in Washington State (Report WA-RD 875.1). Olympia, WA: Washington State Department of Transportation.

Nordback, K., Kothuri, S., Lan, B., Gibson, G., Ferenchak, N., & Marshall, W. (2018, January). Bicyclist safety performance functions for road segments in a U.S. city (TRB Paper 18-06245). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Nordback, K., Kothuri, S., Lan, B., Gibson, G., Ferenchak, N., & Marshall, W. (2018, January). Bicyclist safety performance functions for road segments in a U.S. city. Poster presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C.

Nordback, K. (Producer). (2018). Conversations with colleagues: FHWAÕs travel monitoring analysis system (TMAS) - How to input bicycle and pedestrian data [Video webinar].

Pullen-Seufert, N. (2018, February). Vision zero for youth initiative: Saving lives while building healthy active lifestyles-starting with children. Presented at the Vision Zero Advocate Conference, Toronto, Canada.

Pullen-Seufert, N. (2018, March). Plenary remarks – Progress of NC SRTS program. NC Safe Routes to School Conference, Greensboro, NC.

Seattle Department of Transportation. (2016). City of Seattle bicycle and pedestrian safety analysis (Final) (p. 25). Seattle, WA.

Srinivasan, R. (2017, May). Safety evaluation of flashing yellow arrow treatment (Report P18-21627). Best of the 5th urban street symposium. Presented at 776 Operational Effects of Innovative Intersection and Interchange Designs, Raleigh, NC.

Srinivasan, R., Carter, D., & Lan, B. (2017, October). Investigation of driver performance in different horizontal and vertical curve combinations using SHRP2 naturalistic driving data. Presented at RSS2017 – Road Safety and Simulation International Conference, The Hague, Netherlands.

Srinivasan , R., Lan, B., Carter, D., Smith, S., & Signor, K. (2018, January). Crash modification factors for the flashing yellow arrow treatment at signalized intersections (TRB Paper 18-01776). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Srinivasan, R., Carter, D., Lyon, C., & Albee, M. (2018, January). A before-after evaluation of the realignment of horizontal curves on rural two-lane roads (TRB Paper 18-01803). Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Srinivasan, R. (2018, January). NCHRP 17-72: Update of crash modification factors for the Highway Safety Manual. Poster presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.

Teoh, E., Carter, D.L., Smith, S., & McCartt, A.T. (2017, September). Crash risk factors for interstate large trucks in North Carolina. Journal of Safety Research, 62, 13-21. doi: 10.1016/j.jsr.2017.05.002.

Thomas, L., Gelinne, D., Brookshire, K., LaJeunesse, S., & Sundstrom, C. (2018, January). Coordinating road safety reviews with bicycle and pedestrian project prioritization: Final report on development and implementation of a guide for North Carolina agencies . (FHWA/NC/2016-14). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Thomas, L., Gelinne, D., Brookshire, K., Sundstrom, C. & LaJeunesse, S. (2018, January). North Carolina pedestrian and bicycle road safety assessment guide: A guide for local agencies to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety.(FHWA/NC/2016-14). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Thomas, L., Lan, B., Sanders, R.L., Frackelton, A., Gardner, S., & Hintze, M. (2017). Changing the future? Development and application of pedestrian safety performance functions to prioritize locations in Seattle, Washington. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2659, pp 212–223.

Thomas, L., Vann, M. & Levitt, D. (2018). North Carolina bicycle crash facts, 2011‐2015(RP 2017‐42). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation, Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation.

Thomas, L., Vann, M. & Levitt, D. (2018). North Carolina bicycle crash types, 2011-2015.(RP 2017‐42). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation, Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation.

Thomas, L., Vann, M. & Levitt, D. (2018). North Carolina pedestrian crash trends and facts, 2011‐2015. (RP 2017‐42). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation, Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation.

Thomas, L., Vann, M. & Levitt, D. (2018). North Carolina pedestrian crash types, 2011-2015. (RP 2017‐42). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation, Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation.

Nordback, K. (2017). Nominated for Eco-Counter Outstanding Contribution Award 2017.

HSRC in the news

The following is a highlight of recent media stories that include information and research from the Center. Web links to the following news stories are time sensitive, so some stories might not be accessible after the initial publication date without required registration.

To access more archived news media, please click here.

Center news

HSRC coverage in the news

HSRC on the road

HSRC researchers and staff regularly attend and present at road safety conferences. The following are conferences HSRC staff will attend over the next three months:

Directions is a free, online publication of the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. No permission is needed to reprint from articles, but attribution is requested. Sign up to receive Directions here.

Executive Editor: Caroline Mozingo
Managing Editor: Marie Melendez
Graphic Designer: Graham Russell