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Saving Lives with Smart Lighting Systems-Documentary Video

When people think of transportation engineering, they might first think about commutes, traffic and highway construction.  But the importance of transportation engineering in our communities runs much deeper than that.

TransNow teamed with the Lummi Nation in Whatcom County to produce this short documentary video on the Haxton Way Trail Lighting Project. This video tells the story of how a transportation safety project saves lives and enriches a community every day.

  

The off-grid solar LED smart lighting system was a multi-year, 2 million dollar project coordinated by Richard Jefferson, (an alumnus of the UW College of Engineering) the Director of Planning and Public Works for the Lummi Nation, who came to the UW campus to speak about the safety, environmental, technical and financial aspects of the project.

Did You Know? From 1975 – 2002 the number of fatal motor vehicle crashes that occurred on roads within Indian Reservations increased by 52.5% compared with a 2.2% decrease in auto fatalities in the rest of the nation.

“Fatal Motor Vehicle Crashes on Indian Reservations: 1975-2002” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Technical Information Service, April 2004.

Download video of Haxton Way Trail Presentation on UW campus: MP4 format

Engineering Discovery Days
Engineering Discovery Days 2011 Texting & Driving Is...

Engineering Discovery Days was a great success this year!  Our exhibit, Texting and Driving is ____? was a hit, featuring a state of the art driving simulator (Courtesy of State Farm Insurance) with goggles that simulated impaired/drunk driving and allowed drivers to see how much texting impairs their driving.  

What did people think after the experiment?  For a slide show of people's reactions, click on the picture.

A special thank you to our student volunteers, who did a tremendous job this year managing the exhibits and interacting with students, families and teachers: Tim Pham (pictures), Eric Knigge, Jaedi Stevens, and Jamie Belfiglio.

TransNow would also like to thank:

for donating their driving simulator, making this experiment possible. 

Andrew McVicar, Public Affairs Specialist at State Farm Insurance for donating his time and operating the driving simulator. 

Did You Know?  While you might be aware of the risks involved when using a cell phone while driving, the  statistics are compelling:

  • 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving. (NHTSA).
  • Of those killed in distracted-driving-related crashed, 995 involved reports of a cell phone as a distraction (18% of fatalities in distraction-related crashes). (NHTSA)
  • In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in U.S. roadways and an estimated additional 448,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes that were reported to have involved distracted driving. (FARS and GES)
  • The age group with the greatest proportion of distracted drivers was the under-20 age group – 16 percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving. (NHTSA)
  • Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)
  • Using a cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (Source: University of Utah)

Courtesy of official USDOT website on Distracted Driving.

 

Research Success Profiles: EWITS (WSU)
Hood Canal Bridge construction

Dr. Ken Casavant led a six year effort, the "Eastern WA Intermodal Transportation Study", in order to identify statewide transportation infrastructure needs that would improve economic competitiveness in Washington State. The findings are available at http://ewits.wsu.edu/.

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