Safety
FHWA Proposes to Let States Fail Their Own Safety Goals With Impunity
This story has been updated to reflect comments and clarifications from the FHWA.
March 14, 2014
Does It Take a Crime This Egregious to Hold Drivers Accountable?
A lively night out at one of the year’s most popular festivals turned to carnage last night as a driver rammed through barricades into a pedestrian-only zone at the South By Southwest music-and-film festival in Austin.
March 13, 2014
Sec. Foxx: Bicycle Infrastructure Can Be a “Ladder of Opportunity”
This morning, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s blog post is all about bicycling. He opens by touting the complete streets policy he helped implement in Charlotte (it passed before he was mayor) and the city’s bike-share system -- the largest in the Southeast.
March 5, 2014
Families of NYC Traffic Violence Victims Band Together for Safer Streets
On Sunday, New Yorkers who've lost loved ones to traffic violence gathered on the steps of City Hall in Lower Manhattan to launch Families for Safe Streets, a new initiative advocating for street designs and traffic enforcement that will save lives. In this moving Streetfilm, members of Families for Safe Streets talk about their goals and why they're speaking out.
February 25, 2014
Developing Nations Respond to UN’s “Decade of Action for Road Safety”
As poorly as America performs on street safety compared to places like Germany, the UK, Japan, and the Netherlands, traffic violence is an even graver public health threat in most other countries. Despite the fact that Africa has fewer cars per person than any other continent, for instance, no other suffers from a worse traffic fatality rate. Each year, 24 out of every 100,000 Africans are killed in traffic, with 38 percent of those deaths being pedestrians.
February 24, 2014
Before We Build, We Should Review How a Project Will Affect Safety
Jim Aloisi is a Boston-based lawyer, historian and transportation policymaker. He is a former Massachusetts state secretary of transportation. His most recent book is The Vidal Lecture.
February 11, 2014
New Bill Would Make Bike/Ped Projects Eligible for TIFIA Loans
The day after President Obama’s State of the Union plea to improve economic opportunity for struggling Americans, New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires introduced a bill that he says will help meet that goal.
January 30, 2014
Senators Seek to Shield Motor Vehicle Crash Data From Public View
A new bill introduced by Senators John Hoeven (R-ND) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) would further entrench rules that make it difficult for crash investigators to access black box data from cars.
January 23, 2014
Trucks and Cities Are Like Oil and Water. Is There a Solution?
About 350 pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are killed each year by large trucks in this country. Big freight trucks are incompatible with cities in many ways, bringing danger, pollution, noise, and traffic congestion. They park in bike lanes and have shockingly big blind spots, putting everyone around them at risk. And yet, most cities haven't found a way to reconcile the need to move goods with all their other priorities.
January 9, 2014
Talking Headways Podcast, Episode 4: Car Brain
In this week's podcast, Jeff and I discuss the impressive turnout -- and possible pitfalls -- of London's "die-in" demonstration for bike safety. We try to contain our envy (but not our amazement) at Paul Salopek's seven-year walk tracing the path of Homo sapiens from the Rift Valley to Tierra del Fuego. And we discuss why even passionate transit advocates know what it means to be embarrassed about taking the bus.
December 5, 2013