Transportation Safety

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Depending on where you live, you may encounter severe weather if you must be on U.S. roadways this week, whether you're driving for work or traveling to and from the homes of loved ones. Forecasters are predicting multiple storms from coast to coast, with conditions worsening as we get closer to Thanksgiving. Some 55 million travelers are expected to travel 50 miles or more from their homes for the holiday, according to AAA. That’ll make it the second-highest Thanksgiving travel volume since AAA began tracking in 2000.

For fleet managers of upfit vehicles or those working in dangerous roadside or off-road conditions – such as field mechanics, rescue workers, telecom linemen, farmers, landscapers, plumbers, electricians, and other contractors – using the right quality of lighting can be the difference between life and death.

With millions of passengers travelling on trains and through railway stations every day in the Netherlands, the chance that an employee of railway company Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) will have to respond to an emergency situation is high. Medical emergencies due to sudden illness are most common, but staffers need to be prepared for more complex, and even dangerous, situations.

The National Safety Council (NSC) estimates that 417 people may die and another 47,500 may be seriously injured in car crashes on U.S. roads this Thanksgiving holiday period. Holidays traditionally are a time of travel for families across the United States. Many choose car travel, which has the highest fatality rate of any major form of transportation based on fatalities per passenger mile.

There was plenty of blame to go around in the report released yesterday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) into its investigation of an automated test vehicle crash last year, but most of it was assigned to Uber, the company conducting the test. A pedestrian was killed in the March 18 collision in Tempe, Arizona involving an Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) vehicle - a 2017 Volvo XC90, modified with a proprietary developmental automated driving system.

State and local governments and metro planning organizations are among the entities who can apply for up to half a million dollars each to use in developing, refining, and deploying safety tools that address specific roadway safety problems. The funds – which will be disbursed by the U.S. Department of Transportation – are intended to help the awardees use innovative data tools and information to improve roadway safety.