By Melissa Paciulli, Manager of Research, and Tracy Zafian, Research Fellow
UMass at Time Square! A billboard designed by UMass-Amherst students to raise awareness of the dangers of texting while driving is currently being displayed in Times Square in New York. The billboard will also be displayed on Route 9, Interstate 495 near Lawrence and Methuen and I-290 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Other locations around the country will also display the sign.
The billboard was created with the help of the UMass Adlab at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass-Amherst, under the guidance of Isenberg professor Elizabeth Miller by UMass student Kyle Pandiscio (’19) and now graduate Julia Keefe. At the UMass Adlab, students develop advertisement and campaign images to market “change” for real-life clients.
As described in this UMass press release, Keefe and Pandiscio won the Project Yellow Light billboard Public Service Annoucement (PSA) competition with a billboard design autocorrecting “Don’t Text and Drive” to “Don’t Text and Die” to enforce the concept that a texting accident can occur in a split second. Their billboard design was selected from 1,150 entries. Pandiscio and Keefe realized the irony of creating a billboard when the campaign’s whole point is for drivers to keep their eyes on the road, so they maximized the impact by making the format the text message itself. “When people are driving, the last thing [we] want to do is create a billboard that is distracting,” Pandiscio told the Boston Globe.
The Project Yellow Light competition was sponsored by the Ad Council, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Administration, the National Organizations for Youth Safety, U-Haul, Mazda, Clear Channel, and I Heart Radio. The contest included categories for video, radio and billboard PSAs, with entries submitted by high school and college students.
Only 51% of high school students report always wearing a seatbelt while riding in a car. Photo Source: Manitoba Public Insurance, https://www.mpi.mb.ca
By Tracy Zafian, Research Fellow
According to a recent nationwide study, adults are less likely to use a seatbelt when sitting in the backseat of a vehicle than the front seat. The survey, conducted by the non-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, (IIHS) found this was especially true for adults taking taxis or services such as Uber or Lyft. Among people who make most of their car trips as a rear-seat passenger in such vehicles, only 57% reported always using their seatbelts. In comparison, 74% of the survey respondents overall said they wear seatbelts while in the back seat of personal vehicles.
The survey also found that people ages 35 to 54 were the least likely, (66%), to report always buckling up in the back seat, compared to adults ages 18 to 34 (73%), and those 55 and over (76%). Women were also more likely than men to use seatbelts while in the back seat.
People who buckled up less often while in rear seats were asked why; a quarter of them said they believe the back seat to be safer than the front seat. The survey found that many of those who don’t buckle up in the backseat are more likely to buckle up if they are sitting in the front seat.
Unbelted passengers create a safety risk to themselves and others no matter where they are sitting. As described in this NBC news article and video, in a crash, an unbelted rear passenger can still be thrown about the vehicle and could harm both themselves and others. The IIHS reports that drivers are twice as likely to be killed in crashes when a passenger sitting behind them has no seatbelt restraining them.
Crash data from National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHTSA) demonstrates the importance of buckling up. According to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), close to half (49%) of passenger vehicle occupants killed in U.S. vehicle crashes in 2016 were physically unrestrained during those crashes. This includes more than 50% of the children killed in crashes who were not in seatbelts or car seats, and 58% of people ages 18 to 34 who died in crashes unbelted. The FARS data show 296 fatalities in vehicle crashes in Massachusetts in 2016; almost half of them were found to not be wearing a seat belt (of those where seat belt use could be determined).
Charles Kahane, Ph.D., formerly at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), has conducted extensive research on seat belts and safety. He has estimated that wearing a seat belt cuts drivers’ and front-seat passengers’ risk of fatal injury by 45% in passenger cars and up to 60% in SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks. In an analysis of backseat seatbelt use in passenger cars, Mr. Kahane found that buckling up in the center rear seat reduces fatality risk by 58%. For side rear seats, seatbelt use reduces fatality risks by 54%.
Seat belt laws and enforcement help encourage greater seatbelt use. Every U.S. state except New Hampshire has a law requiring seat belt use (Details on the laws for each state here). Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia have primary seat belt laws that allow police officers to stop vehicles solely because of a seat belt violation. Seat belt laws in the remaining fifteen states, including Massachusetts, are enforced secondarily, meaning that police officers must stop a vehicle for another infraction before they can issue a seat belt ticket. Twenty-nine states and DC have laws for back seat seatbelt use, though some of these laws exempt adults or children over a certain age in the back seat from their seatbelt requirements. Massachusetts’ law requires children to have safety seats until they are at least 8 years of age or over 57 inches tall, and that everyone else traveling in a car wear a seatbelt.
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS) runs public education and enforcement campaigns, such as Click it or Ticket, to encourage greater seatbelt use. EOPSS also funds an annual month-long observational study on seatbelt usage. The study counts on the number of drivers and front seat passengers wearing and not wearing seatbelts. The information is collected at various roadway locations around the Commonwealth. UMTC Post-Doc Researcher Cole Fitzpatrick and UMassSafe Associate Director Robin Riessman oversaw the 2017 study. The 2016 seat belt study results are on the EOPSS web site. In Massachusetts from 2006 to 2016, the observed safety belt usage rate for front seat occupants increased from 67% to 78%. The 2017 results are not posted but the prepared report shows a slight decrease in front occupant safety belt usage to 74%.
The same type of data collection is done on a national level each year through NHTSA’s National Occupant Protection Use Survey. The 2016 results showed that nationally, seat belt use by front seat occupants reached 90%, including 92% in primary seat belt law states and 83% in other law states.
One approach Massachusetts and the 14 other states could take to promote greater seatbelt use is to change seatbelt laws from secondary to primary, which allows stops for seat belt enforcement. However, another approach could be technology in cars to provide warnings and reminders to vehicle occupants, especially backseat passengers, to wear their seatbelts. Most modern cars provide warnings (red seatbelt lights on the dashboard, for example) to remind drivers to buckle up in the car. As IIHS discusses, however, no US-made cars currently have similar warnings to remind backseat passengers of this. Such warnings and reminders could be implemented for taxis and ride-sharing services too; to help the increasing numbers of backseat passengers to stay safe!
Vision Zero started in Sweden in 1997, when it was adopted as national policy. Since then, Sweden’s rate of traffic fatalities has decreased by more than half, from seven fatalities per 100,000 people to less than three fatalities per 100,000, despite vehicle usage increasing. Worldwide there are currently 1.3 million deaths annually from road crashes. Road safety is the primary importance of Vision Zero, and transportation objectives such as mobility are addressed based on safety. There are now road safety organizations promoting Vision Zero in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. A number of cities in these countries and over 25 cities in the U.S., including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and Boston, have implemented Vision Zero policies.
The City of Boston’s Vision Zero website describes the City’s “commitment to focus the city’s resources on proven strategies to eliminate fatal and serious traffic crashes in the city by 2030.”
In Zero work is connected to the City’s Smart Streets goals and using technology to understand traffic patterns and safety issues on Boston roadways. The City of Boston recently partnered with Verizon for an intersection study using Verizon’s smart-street technologies. At MassDOT’s Moving Together Conference, Kim English from Verizon spoke about this initiative. The study was conducted at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Beacon Street, where one bicyclist was killed and sixteen bicyclists and pedestrians were injured during 2015 to 2016. Verizon installed over 30 wireless traffic sensors and 15 video cameras at the intersection, to collect data on car, truck, bicycle, and pedestrian movements. The gathered data was anonymous, with no personally identifying video or other information included. Verizon then synched this data with bus and traffic signal information from other sources, and analyzed the data using complex algorithms to pinpoint key issues and to help develop recommendations for intersection improvements.
In her talk, Ms. English spoke about reducing left-turn crashes at the intersection. Early results also showed that cars often failed to yield to pedestrians on the western side of the intersection, as was discussed in a recent MIT Technology Review article on the project. The final recommendations for this intersection and others with safety issues included intersection design changes, better signage, public outreach and education, greater traffic rule enforcement, and/or other interventions.
The initial study with Verizon has now ended, and the City of Boston is looking to extend this high tech data gathering and analysis to other intersections along Massachusetts Avenue, in order to better understand traffic and safety issues along the corridor.
Thermal imaging cameras can be used for vehicle monitoring and counting, even in darkness. Source: http://www.flir.co.uk
Ms. English indicated that Verizon is now working with the City of San Francisco to study 15 intersections using the same data collection and analysis technologies, and looking at other cities with whom to partner. The MIT Technology Review article mentioned that Verizon is also presently testing other smart-street technologies such as light poles that can broadcast emergency alerts and Wi-Fi connected informational kiosks.
In a 2014 interview, Traffic Safety Strategist Matts-Åke Belin discussed Vision Zero with the Swedish Transport Administration, saying, “If we can create a system where people are safe, why shouldn’t we? Why should we put the whole responsibility on the individual road user, when we know they….will do lots of things that we might not be happy about? So let’s try to build a more human-friendly system instead. And we have the knowledge to do that.”i
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