Most media outlets spend the week leading to today recapping the top stories of the past year. There were the typical news roundups that cited the top news stories, movies, and celebrities but there were also very specific reflections on 2011 such as the word of the year (tergiversate just edged out occupy) and the top 10 Google searches of the year. I had a difficult time finding any transportation safety roundabouts so I decided to make my own using a word cloud.
This word cloud is my attempt to capture the top stories in transportation in 2011. I generated it from the U.S. DOT Secretary’s blog, The Fast Lane. A word cloud uses the words in the posts from the last year to identify the topics and themes that were discussed. Safety is prominent in the word cloud. Technology, innovation, and research are also collectively very prominent. Drivers and vehicles are more prominent than infrastructure, which is a little surprising given that our nation’s aging infrastructure was catapulted front page headlines just over four years ago with the collapse of the 1-35W bridge in Minneapolis. The word cloud also reflects the blog’s coverage of efforts in several States to ban cell phones and driving while texting. From my perspective, this was a large theme in 2011 with some labeling distracted driving the new intoxicateed driving.
Other notable national transportation safety themes in 2011 included:
· Funding. The future of transportation spending and the impact on safety was and will continue to be an important theme as many agencies are trying to determine how the next transportation funding bill will address safety.
· Blips? Several States experienced an increase in fatal crashes in 2011 after several years of steady decreases nationally. Various news stories questioned if these were statistical blips or the start of a new upward trend in these States.
· Smarter Vehicles. Several automakers introduced vehicles with technologies to prevent crashes including cars that can detect collisions are imminent and initiate braking themselves.
Although not national news, other themes in 2011 included the increased use of the flashing yellow arrow for permitted movements, the development of new crash modification factors and guidance on their use, and the start of integration of the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) by State and local agencies.
What will be the guiding theme for highway safety in 2012? I predict we’ll see an increased focus on the importance of data, including expanded applications of spatial data. I also predict that crash modification factors and the use of the HSM will continue to evolve, in-vehicle technologies such as GPS will be better recognized as contributing to distracted driving, older driver issues will become acute, and the blips will be recognized as trends.
Please use the comment box to add your own predictions for 2012. Feel free to add in flying cars or the like.
Kim - Very interesting!!! I was struck by a session at this year's TRB Annual meeting. A panel of former (and the current) transportation Secretaries were assembled to talk about their experiences and observations about the future of the Federal role in transportation. A DOT employee asked a great question, pertaining to the urgency expressed by the fatalities of a single plane crash when the equivalent of a plane crash occurs on the nation's highways almost every day - over 32,000 deaths last year. The reaction from the panel was (to say the least) very animated. Several of the Secretaries defended the attention being paid to highway safety; mentioning a focus on texting, drunk driving and seat belts. Unfortunately, they did not mention infrastructure-related safety at all. There is no doubt that the issue areas they mentioned are important - but we should be focusing on a full spectrum of safety initiatives and solutions; not just the ones that are easy to focus on through commercials and enforcement campaigns.
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