Category: Highway Safety
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In 2015, motorcycle crashes helped drive highway death toll to highest level in years
By Paul Feldman
FairWarning
Last year was a bad one for motorcyclists, with a new estimate showing that 5,010 bikers were killed in crashes nationwide, the worst death toll in seven years. And Florida led the nation. -
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6124 SEEN/
Evidence mounts of distraction risks from digital billboards along roadways
By Paul Feldman
FairWarning
Digital billboards clearly catch the eye of passing motorists. But what is also increasingly clear is that such distractions can heighten safety risks in heavy traffic and other complex driving conditions, a long-time roadway researcher says. -
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7142 SEEN/
Regulators, automakers urged to warn parents about flawed seats
By Myron Levin
FairWarning
For decades, safety regulators and the auto industry have known that even in a moderate speed rear-end crash a driver or front seat passenger can slide out of the seat belt and be launched headfirst into the backseat, badly injuring a backseat passenger or being paralyzed or killed himself. Since the 1990s, authorities have instructed parents to put young children in the backseat to avoid injury from an inflating airbag. But critics say they have failed to provide another crucial piece of information: Due to the risk of seat failure in a rear collision, the safest place for a child is behind an unoccupied seat, or else behind the lightest person in the front. -
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4752 SEEN/
Critics fault new highway law for concessions to trucking industry
By Brian Joseph
FairWarning
A $305 billion highway bill approved by Congress and signed by President Obama last week includes several provisions aggressively sought by the trucking industry that, critics say, will undermine traffic safety. -
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5520 SEEN/
Heavy-spending trucking industry pushes Congress to relax safety rules
By Brian Joseph
FairWarning.org
Big rig crashes kill nearly 4,000 Americans each year and injure more than 85,000. Fatalities involving large trucks are up 17 percent since 2009; injuries up 28 percent. Given these numbers, you might expect Congress to be agitating for tighter controls on big rigs. In fact, many members are pushing for the opposite – looser restrictions on the trucking industry and its drivers. -
Collision course: With wary eye on big trucks, bike riders seek safe space on city streets
By Bridget Huber
FairWarning
On a July afternoon in New Orleans last year, Philip Geeck was riding his bicycle in a marked bike lane on a busy street when he was crushed to death by a tractor-trailer truck that witnesses said tried to turn right without signaling. Heavy trucks make up a fraction of the vehicles on the road, but they are involved in a disproportionate share of accidents that kill bicyclists and pedestrians, according to federal data.
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