Michigan Traffic Safety Summit 2023

My talk highlighted research supporting key elements of speeding countermeasures from the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration’s, “Proven Safety Countermeasures”, including setting safe speeds for all, variable speed limits, and the use of speed safety cameras. Issues with implementation of current speeding countermeasures, alternative approaches, and the consideration of personal and environmental factors that impact speeding decision-making were discussed.

The audience was engaged and inspired into conversation about the merits and challenges of the approaches.

Of course, I took the opportunity to highlight the usefulness of mixed methods approaches when studying traffic safety, something that the many engineers in the room probably didn’t have too much experience with. Narratives/quotes from qualitative data can really grasp one’s attention and stick with you in ways that can statistics often can’t. They show the life behind the numbers. The audience helped me to show exactly that when they were all able to finish a powerful quote from a local fire chief we heard at the earlier lunchtime panel. It was wonderful!

I was also excited to use Menti for the first time to get some more on-the-ground participation and before-and-after thoughts.

The Menti results and the audience conversation underscored that although each countermeasure can be successful in reducing speeding and related deaths, many complicated factors need to be considered when implementing them, from engineering demands to competing legal statues.

Getting a sense of where the audience was before the talk started. Automated speed enforcement with ‘speed safety cameras’ is one option that has been shown to effectively slow traffic.

The post-talk perceptions of the three countermeasures. As expected, the use of speed safety cameras deserves is still rather split.