The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a forum this week in Washington on pedestrian safety and the latest technology that’s expected to help protect people crossing streets and walking in parking lots.
Highway engineers, policy makers and transportation policy advocates were in attendance, which consisted of four sessions that focused on general pedestrian safety, design and countermeasures, vehicle-technology developments and trends, and safe-street planning.
NTSB Vice Chairwoman T. Bella Dinh-Zarr provided made opening and closing statements at the forum.
During the session on vehicle technology, panelists consisted of Sven Zimmermann, manager and engineer for Bosch Chassis Systems Control; David Zuby, executive vice president and chief research officer of the Vehicle Research Center of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Highway Loss Data Institute; and Bob Kreeb, division chief of Intelligent Technologies Research at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. During this session, automated driving, driver assistance and other high-tech developments were discussed.
Presentations were made in the safe-street planning section by Barbara McCann, director of the Department of Transportation’s Office of Safety, Energy and the Environment; Luisa Paiewonsky, director of the VOLPE Center for Infrastructure Systems and Technology; and others.
