Transit Triumph
The 1988 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement is Boston's Southwest Corridor, chosen not only for its size, complexity and technology, but for its environmental, public...
Life-Safety, Key to Seismic Evaluation
Most buildings in the U.S. don't meet modern standards for withstanding potential damage from possible earthquakes, and existing buildings present one of the greatest risks...
Highway Safety - Is the Job Finished?
A review of past measures undertaken to improve highway safety is given. The Highway Safety Acts have helped reduce the number of injuries and fatalities in spite of the increased number...
Historical Changes in Highway Safety: 1966 - 1987
During the past several decades, substantial changes have occurred in the national economy and culture. Corresponding changes have taken place in the highway transportation system. While...
Current Status of Research and Implementation
A review of the effectiveness of roadway safety measures to reduce traffic accidents is given. This paper attempts to discuss in detail the current status of safety-related knowledge and...
Changing Requirements
There are three sections to the presentation. First, a discussion of the changing environment of highway transportation - what are the factors and variables that are changing in the world...
Highway Injuries: Our Major Health Problem
Injuries are the leading cause of death in the United States from early childhood until about age 45. Motor vehicles kill more Americans age 1 to 34 than any other source of injury or...
Environmental Health Programs of the USEPA
The major programs of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designed to reduce risk to public health are summarized with emphasis on their content, funding and effectiveness in...
Air Safety?Programs and their Effectiveness
Airplane accidents have always had considerable media attention, particularly, when they involve large numbers of fatalities. Ever since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and the air...
Railroad Safety Programs and Effectiveness
Safety in the railroad industry has been a matter of concern to employees, officers, federal agencies and the general public since railroads came into being. This paper summarizes the...
Conflicts: The Common Denominator of Health/Safety Programs
Constraints on time and resources influences the public sector as strongly as our personal lives. Experience teaches us that our desires must be tempered with hard realities. Finite resources...
Allocating Public Funds: Morality and Constraints
The highway safety engineer is continually faced with the trade-off between expenditures for highway safety improvements and reductions in highway fatalities, injuries, and property damage...
The Federal Budgetary Process
The paper outlines the federal budget process as it affects highway safety programs. There are a variety of federal programs which come under the umbrella designation highway safety. Those...
Safety Spending: Usually Begrudged, Often Misallocated
The author reviews the engineering decisions and statistical and other measures of project success in the use of Federal and state funds for roadside safety work in the Federal-aid Hazard...
Comparing Benefits of Safety and Non-Safety Programs
The objective of this presentation is to compare benefit-cost ratios for major highway construction projects to those for highway safety projects, such as: (1) new highways, (2) major...
How Uncle Sam Values Mortality Risk Reductions
This paper reviews the policies, methods and 'value-of-statistical-life' (VSL) estimates used by several federal agencies to assess the economic efficiency of...
Benefit-Cost Analysis: Past and Future Directions
As implemented at the State level, highway resource allocation models fail to consider the travel time delay and crashes that result from construction. They use the economic costs of crashes...
Highway Safety; Moving from Fantasy to Reality
An assessment of the effects of highway safety program on the reduction of traffic accidents is made. The annual traffic death rate is currently 47,900. The paper discusses whether present...
A Case for Science-Based Road Safety Design and Management
What civil engineers do has a major effect on road safety. However, contrary to appearances, the level of safety built into roads is largely unpremeditated. Standards and practices have...
Highway Safety - Planning for the Future
Because motor vehicle traffic is expected to continue to grow, renewed efforts will be required to prevent the problem of motor vehicle crash deaths and injuries growing much larger than...
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