Researchers and practitioners interested in transportation safety gathered in St. Paul on May 21 for the Roadway Safety Showcase: Safety Innovations for Today and Tomorrow, a one-day event held in conjunction with the CTS Transportation Research Conference.
The showcase highlighted the latest work by researchers from the Roadway Safety Institute (RSI), the Region 5 University Transportation Center led by the University of Minnesota. RSI’s goal is to prevent crashes to reduce fatalities and life-changing injuries.
This goal fits well with the USDOT’s vision for the future of transportation safety, according to USDOT Assistant Secretary for Transportation Greg Winfree, who gave opening remarks.
“The first 50 years of transportation safety focused on occupants surviving crashes,” Winfree said. “The next 50 years will be about avoiding those crashes altogether.”
Showcase attendees learned how RSI researchers are developing solutions for some of today’s most pressing safety problems. Researchers shared updates on projects related to tribal nation road safety, connected vehicle technology, bicycle and pedestrian safety, wrong-way driving, automated speed enforcement, alcohol-related hot-spot analysis, a decision-support system for older drivers, and commercial vehicle driver safety.
The event featured 14 researchers from three U of M campuses as well as researchers from other RSI member institutions, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), University of Akron, and Auburn University.
One of the event’s featured sessions focused on railroad grade crossing safety. More than 200 people lose their lives at railroad crossings in the United States each year, and railroad incidents involving hazardous material pose significant threats to safety, public health, and the environment. Although the number of crashes has been declining in recent decades, the result of a vehicle–train collision is often catastrophic.
Three RSI researchers from UIUC described how they are working to improve safety at and around railroad grade crossings through a three-part project. Their work includes developing modeling techniques that provide a better understanding of crash occurrence, contributor factors, and crash prediction at rail crossings; predicting train arrival times to facilitate emergency response management and alert drivers at unsignalized crossings; and strategically allocating emergency responders and resources in the event of a rail incident, even across jurisdictional boundaries.
Presentations from the showcase, and a fact sheet about the rail crossing project, are available on the RSI website.
