CSCRS Research to Practice Bytes
CSCRS’s Research to Practice Bytes series focused on multidisciplinary research and practices to advance transportation safety. The series frequently featured principles and practices related to Safe Systems and the role of systems science, core themes in CSCRS’s initiatives.
The series has ended. Thank you to all of our expert presenters, and to the hundreds of participants.
All the recordings on this page, as well as recordings for several other CSCRS learning sessions, are available on our YouTube channel.
Past webinars
Unplanned pandemic planning: Lessons learned from rapid COVID street transformations
May 31, 2023
Presenter: Tab Combs, Research Associate, Department of City and Regional Planning, UNC Chapel Hill
Description: This webinar will focus on a study that combined structured interviews with ped/bike count data to explore the processes through which nine U.S. communities planned and evaluated rapid rollouts of new active mobility infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research identified a wide range of approaches to “COVID streets.” Interestingly, we also note that standard ped/bike count data did not reflect community leaders’ perceived impacts of their rapid rollouts, suggesting a need for more intentional methods of quantifying the impacts of such projects. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Developing an online Vision Zero resource library
April 26, 2023
Presenters:
- Jordan April, Master of Public Health and Master of City and Regional Planning Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Lacie Emmerich, Health Behavior Master of Public Health Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Alessandro Figueroa, Health Equity, Social Justice, and Human Rights Master of Public Health Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Deborah Shoola, Health Behavior Master of Public Health Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Description: Vision Zero is a growing movement throughout the U.S. to eliminate all traffic-related deaths and injuries while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all persons. This presentation provides an overview of the applied, year-long, community-led service-learning project developed by the UNC Highway Safety Research Center for a group of Master of Public Health students in the Health Behavior and Health Equity departments at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. Students were tasked with developing an online resource library that includes tangible and actionable tools, activities, and other resources that interdisciplinary stakeholders can engage with to make their communities healthier and build community buy-in for equity-centered road safety initiatives, like Vision Zero. This project included conducting key informant interviews, generating reports that detail the roles different stakeholder groups play in Vision Zero efforts, conducting design thinking activities to inform a Dataverse resource repository, and developing a website sustainability plan. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
What Can We Learn from Fatal Automated Vehicle Crashes? A Closer Look at Crash Narratives in Media
March 22, 2023
Presenter: Meredith King, Graduate Research Assistant – Transportation Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Description: Text mining tools allow for a deep dive into the language used in fatal crash narratives. This session explores key crash details that emerge from analyzing a unique dataset of news articles discussing fatal collisions involving one or more automated vehicles. The media dataset also provides insights into the survivability of the driver as a function of the crash details presented. The presentation will provide insights into the importance of analyzing narratives in media that shape public opinions about automated vehicle safety. Continued monitoring and analysis of automated vehicle crashes can help to inform future research and adoption of automated vehicles. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Peer Influence and the Perceptions of Safety
February 22, 2023
Presenter: Jill Cooper, Co-Director, University of California, Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC)
Description: This session focused on a study examining the relationship between an individual’s perceptions of safety and those held by their peers using a survey that asked North Carolina residents a myriad of questions concerning transportation. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
This session was based in part on the brief “Peer Influence and Perceptions of Safety,” written by Cooper and Aqshems Nichols, CSCRS’s 2022 Student of the Year. The brief is based on research from the CSCRS project “Assessing how private beliefs conflict with public action on Safe Systems.”
Reframing Crash Reporting in News Media: A How-to Guide for Road Safety Professionals
January 25, 2023
Presenter: Elyse Keefe, Road Safety Project Coordinator, UNC Injury Prevention Research Center
Description: The ways in which news media frame crashes can have a significant impact on the public’s view of who is responsible, the motivation for making change, and beliefs about potential solutions. Unfortunately, research has found that reporting on crashes typically places responsibility on individual road users (particularly those on foot or biking) and frames crashes as isolated events. In order to build public knowledge and support for a Safe System approach, it is crucial that road safety professionals use effective messaging strategies to reframe crash reporting. The CSCRS media framing guide was recently updated to include step-by-step guidance, tips, and examples for professionals to help reframe the message. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
How to get Safe Systems wrong AND right, Part II: Responding to your questions
December 14, 2022
Presenters: Eric Dumbaugh, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University, and Seth LaJeunesse, Senior Research Associate, UNC Highway Safety Research Center
Description: This session continued our November discussion about the dos and don’ts of Safe System implementation. (You may view that webinar here.) In December, we focused more on real-world examples of Safe System implementation and answered questions regarding Safe System best practices. Watch the recording.
How to get Safe Systems wrong … and how to get it right
November 16, 2022
Presenters: Eric Dumbaugh, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University, and Seth LaJeunesse, Senior Research Associate, UNC Highway Safety Research Center
Description: While Safe System concepts offer many new ways of advancing injury prevention, many agencies continue to fail to see change. In this webinar, we offer an overview of common pitfalls in practice, as well as a case study of one community that is overcoming barriers and innovating its way toward a Safe System. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Case studies from across the U.S. on using systems thinking tools to inform Safe System partnership, strategic planning, and research
October 26, 2022
Presenter: Becky Naumann, Core Faculty at the Injury Prevention Research Center and Assistant Research Professor of Epidemiology at UNC Chapel Hill
Description: As communities across the US work to embrace Safe System principles, tangible tools and frameworks are needed to guide their planning, partnership, and implementation efforts. Additionally, tools are needed to help researchers study different collaboration models and pinpoint specific research needs for operationalizing a Safe System approach. This session will provide real-world examples illustrating systems thinking tools that transportation practitioners, researchers, and coalitions can use in their partnership development, strategic planning, and research to help with adoption of a multidisciplinary Safe System approach. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Bringing development review into Safe Systems
September 28, 2022
Presented by: Jesse Saginor, Chair and Professor, Department of Urban & Regional Planning, Florida Atlantic University
Description: Traffic impact assessment (TIA) is an essential component of the land development review process across the US. Conventional TIA practices have long focused on identifying and mitigating the congestion impacts of new land development. Safety for road users is often a secondary concern and assumed incorrectly to be “taken care of” through congestion mitigation measures. This research explores the mental models behind this assumption, identifies opportunities to reconceptualize the role of land development in fostering safer streets, and advances a framework for centering road user safety in the development review process. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Introducing micromodes.org: The first surveillance system for micromobility fatalities
August 31, 2022
Presented by: Kristin Podsiad, Dual Master of Public Health and Master of City and Regional Planning Student and Graduate Research Assistant, Highway Safety Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Description:
Micromobility devices are increasing in popularity worldwide. However, because of the novelty of these devices, the fatality risk associated with these devices is unknown. This webinar will introduce the new website, micromodes.org, which aims to improve the tracking of fatalities involving micromobility devices, starting with e-scooter fatalities. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Safe vehicles: How effective are pedestrian crash prevention systems?
July 27, 2022
Presented by: Asad Khattak, Beaman Professor and Transportation Program Coordinator, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Description: In the drive toward safe vehicles, pedestrian crash prevention (PCP) systems have the potential to mitigate pedestrian crash severity or prevent crashes altogether. However, the reliability and effectiveness of these technologies have remained uncertain. This study explores the performance of PCP systems in field test situations to understand their effectiveness and how it varies among cars. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Strategies for managing the effects of kinetic energy in crashes
June 22, 2022
Presented by: Offer Grembek, Co-Director, SafeTREC, University of California, Berkeley
Description: This session will describe the role of kinetic energy as a focal principle of the Safe System approach. A proposed framework that allows us to tap into a set of six ordinal crash prevention strategies will be presented. Implications for policy making and technological innovation will be discussed. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Vision Zero in U.S. Communities
May 25, 2022
Presented by: Kelly Evenson, Professor of Epidemiology at UNC Chapel Hill
Description: Vision Zero aims to reduce fatalities and serious injuries from road traffic crashes to zero through a Safe Systems approach. Not much is known about the extent of uptake of Vision Zero in the United States, or the attributes and functioning of the initiatives. In this session, we will describe characteristics of Vision Zero initiatives across the United States. Watch the recording.
Creative placemaking techniques to advance traffic safety
April 27, 2022
Presented by: Irvans Augustin, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Urban Impact Lab, and Eric Dumbaugh, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University
Description: Advancing safety requires us to not only enhance our planning and design processes, but to establish local cultural and belief systems that value, prioritize, and advocate for traffic safety. This session highlights an effort to link creative placemaking techniques with traffic safety. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Reports from the battle for the curb: Using social media to understand safety challenges faced by urban delivery drivers
March 23, 2022
Presented by: Evan Iacobucci, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dana Magliola, Statewide Program Manager, Freight + Logistics, North Carolina Department of Transportation
Description: Recent surges in urban freight delivery—largely driven by e-commerce and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—have raised concerns surrounding impacts on safety, congestion, curb use, and unauthorized parking of freight vehicles. In this webinar, we highlight recent work that used online conversational data from Reddit to probe challenges delivery drivers face, with a specific focus on parking behavior. In particular, we discuss the implications that these behaviors—and the conditions that precipitate them—have for the safety of road users. Finally, we will discuss primary types of and reasons for unauthorized parking behavior, perceptions of parking enforcement, and interactions drivers reported with other road users. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Exploring micromobility user safety behavior
February 23, 2022
Presented by: Chris Cherry, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Rebecca Sanders, Founder and Principal Investigator, Safe Streets Research
Description: This webinar highlighted the results of work aiming to understand micromobility safety through the lens of survey questionnaires and police crash data analysis, and introduced a survey resource that can be used to measure behavior between cities. Lean more about the project here. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Building a MVC injury system of linked data: Lessons learned & questions answered about pedestrian injuries
January 26, 2022
Presented by: Katie Harmon, UNC Highway Safety Research Center, and Anna Waller, Director, Carolina Center for Health Informatics
Description: This webinar highlighted the ups and downs of North Carolina’s experience linking motor vehicle crash (MVC) and healthcare data, including how linked data have been used to answer critical questions about pedestrian injuries. Watch the recording. Slide deck.
Traffic Crashes As Seen On TV: An Opportunity to Reshape the Dialogue Around Road User Injury
July 1, 2021
Presented by: Seth LaJeunesse, UNC Highway Safety Research Center, and Sydney Nicolla, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Description: Presenters shared details of a study analyzing U.S. crash-featuring TV news stories, and the development of a media framing guide designed to motivate transportation and public health professionals to work with news journalists to help shape the narrative around traffic injury. Learn more about this project here. Watch the recording.
Exploring the National Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Data Clearinghouse
April 28, 2021
Presented by: Krista Nordback, UNC Highway Safety Research Center, and Wes Kumfer, UNC Highway Safety Research Center.
Description: In this webinar, presenters demonstrated how to use the Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Data Clearinghouse, including geographic and temporal data search capabilities, and discussed strengths and shortcomings of these datasets. Learn more about the project here. Watch the recording.
Crash Risk for Low-Income and Minority Populations: Identifying At-risk Cohorts and Underlying Risk Factors
February 24, 2021
Presented by: Eric Dumbaugh, Florida Atlantic University.
Description: This webinar presented the results of an epidemiological examination of pedestrians and bicyclists in South Florida, detailing pedestrian cohorts and bicyclist cohorts at specific risk of injury or death. Watch the recording.
Strengthening Existing and Facilitating New Vision Zero Plans
December 8, 2020
Presented by: Kelly Evenson, UNC-Chapel Hill, & Seth LaJeunesse, UNC Highway Safety Research Center. Leah Shahum, of the Vision Zero Network, will join the presenters to contextualize this research.
Description: This webinar discussed findings from the “Guide to Developing a Vision Zero Plan” abstraction and provided actionable feedback for communities creating new Vision Zero plans or updating current Vision Zero plans. Watch the recording.
Assessing Tesla Model 3s’ Autopilot Interactions with the Driver Monitoring System
September 30, 2020
Presented by: Missy Cummings, Safety Advisor, National Highway Traffic Administration (formerly with Duke University)
Description: This webinar examined the results of a series of Tesla Model 3 on-road tests, which show wide variability, with excellent performance in some cases but also likely catastrophic performance in others. Watch the recording.
