Episode 130: Trying to Make the Roads Safer

There are many ways that UConn impacts the citizens of Connecticut beyond its obvious academic mission. The Connecticut Transportation Institute is one of the outlets and it is led by director and associate research professor Eric Jackson. The institute serves to advance the maintenance and enhancement of transportation systems and safety, with a particular focus on Connecticut’s current and future needs. Eric joins us on the UConn 360 podcast to talk about his work and why traffic safety and fatalities have increased in recent years. The reasons are many and vary from the effects of COVID, to distracted driving, and many others. The CTI is doing important work and Eric tells the story in an interesting enlightening way.

Listen to Episode 130 at Podbean

Mike: Well, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the UConn 360 podcast. I’m Mike Enright from university communications, along with Izzy Harris from University Communications. Hi, Izzy.

Izzy: Hey, Mike.

Mike: How are you today?

Izzy: Oh, I am wonderful. Wow.

Mike: You say that with great enthusiasm.

Izzy: I know, because I feel like we haven’t done a podcast in a long time. We haven’t done a podcast in a while, but today we have a very, very important podcast to do and a very, very important subject.

It seems like maybe it’s since the pandemic or just in general, that traffic safety nationally and particularly in Connecticut, is accidents and fatalities are at an all-time high. And it’s tough to understand why, but our guest is going to help us a little bit. And he’s worked very hard to improve that problem, especially here in Connecticut.

He’s been a great ambassador for, for UConn out in the public. So, we’re talking about Eric Jackson, who’s the executive director of the Connecticut Transportation Institute. It’s a research center located here at UConn, and he has completely overhauled and modernized crash data and safety around the state.

His research is focused on improving crash data collection in Connecticut, as well as providing public access to that crash data. So, Eric, thank you for joining us here today on the UConn 360 podcast.

Eric: Great. Thanks for having me here. It’s always great to come in and talk about what we do and some of the issues we’re seeing out on the roadways.

Mike: So, tell us about the institute and the research center that you direct here at UConn. When was it established and, and how has the work evolved?

Eric: Absolutely. So actually, the Connecticut Transportation Institute was established back in 1974. There was a state legislative bill, a public act that was put in place that established and started the Institute. It actually finally formed and got started in the fall semester of 1975. So, we’re coming up on 50 years, the 50-year anniversary of the Connecticut Transportation Institute. It started off with a small group of faculty members that were really interested in promoting transportation as a career and really focused on transportation technologies. So, we’ve continued that on even in today. So, a lot of the work that we do today is really focused on educating the public, educating public works departments, educating students, and really focused on technologies of the future and how do we keep people moving forward and understanding the future of transportation and the needs of transportation moving forward.

Izzy: Transportation technology and safety is like a very niche field. How did you become interested in this?

Eric: So, it was very interesting. So, I started work as an undergraduate student at the University of Kentucky. I started doing research as an undergrad, working with a faculty member in transportation engineering. I’m a civil engineer by, by training and trade. She actually moved, left the University of Kentucky, came up to the University of Connecticut. At that point, I really got involved in looking at crash data and understanding factors that lead up to crashes occurring, followed her to the University of Connecticut. Where I really got into graduate school, really got into some really cool and interesting projects. I had no plan of ever getting my doctorate degree. But the work that I was doing was so interesting. I decided to stick around after my master’s and, and, and get my PhD. And from there, I did a lot of research in vehicle emissions. She left then and went to the University of Vermont. I told her, I can’t go any farther north. I can’t take any more snow. It’s cold enough here. But when she left, she took all of the emissions modeling equipment with her. So, I had to transition kind of my career and look at how do I use some of these skills that I’ve learned in my PhD work into a future career. So, a lot of my PhD work was looking at how driver behavior influenced pollutants coming out of a tailpipe of a car. So, I transitioned to look at how does driver behavior really impact the safety out on the roadways. So, that’s where I’ve kind of made my career for the last 18 years here at the University of Connecticut. And it’s been a very rewarding relationship partnering with the Connecticut DOT on a lot of the projects that we work on.

Mike: So, speaking of DOT, it just seems like traffic accidents and fatalities are on the rise. You know, you drive, especially around the holiday time, you saw the signs up on the highways, how many fatalities there were. You watch the 11 o’clock news or the 10 o’clock news and there’s an accident here, there’s an accident there, there’s a fatality here. Are fatalities and accidents on the rise? And if so, what changed?

Eric: They are. And one of the things that we have seen is everybody talks about the impacts of COVID. What we’ve really seen is in 2020, when the lockdowns took place, driver behavior went down. All the cars went off the roadway, people could travel on the interstates at kind of whatever speed they would like to. We also theorized that a lot of people were told on a daily basis, you know, if you’re going to go outside, you’re going to die. If you catch COVID, you’re going to die. People kind of got blind to the risk and kind of basically said, I’m going to do whatever I want to do, because regardless of what I do, there’s risk out there, and I’m likely going to die. So, what we saw was this dramatic increase in vehicle speeds and bad driver behavior, which has resulted in an increase in fatalities. So, in 2022, we saw the most fatalities that Connecticut has ever seen in the last 40 years. Before COVID, we were on a downward trend. So, we were seeing a decrease in the number of fatalities on the roadway, but in 2020 we saw this sharp increase. One of the other things we kind of attributed that to is we’ve seen a reduction in police enforcement out on the roadways. So, that lack of enforcement and bad behaviors that aren’t being checked has really led into this issue that we see on the roadways with a lot more fatalities.

Mike: Is there a trend? Is it young people, older people, or is it just all over the place age-wise?

Eric: It’s across the board in terms of age and gender. But one of the things that we are seeing, we’re seeing dramatic increases in pedestrian fatalities, and we’re seeing dramatic increases in motorcycle fatalities. So, what we call those, those are our vulnerable road users—road users that don’t have the car around them, they don’t have the protection of a, basically an exoskeleton that’s around them. So, they’re very vulnerable to people that are speeding, people that are distracted, people that are doing things out on the road that they shouldn’t be—running red lights. We’re seeing now the state pushing forward with speed cameras and red-light cameras. This is all kind of a fix to trying to curb those bad behaviors that we’re seeing out on the roadways and stop those fatalities from occurring.

Izzy: Eric, it was really interesting when you brought up COVID because that’s something that I never would have thought of when it comes to getting in my car and driving somewhere every day. Since post-COVID and all the emotions that people are feeling, does that affect any road rage incidents? Have we been seeing those on the rise as well?

Eric: Yes, so we’ve seen a lot of reports coming out that road rage incidents are more than two times what they were pre-pandemic. Road rage shootings are two and a half times larger than they were pre-pandemic. So, you’re seeing this stress level of individuals out on the roadway is at an all-time high. That’s also compounded and impacted by inflation. So, we’re seeing road rage incidents. People are stressed out more than they ever have been. The political climate is seeing some of that as well. So, all of these things, once you get into your car, a lot of people feel that car is their safe space and they can let loose, but it also really tends to compound, and you get a lot of that aggressive driving and aggressive nature toward other people around you.

Izzy: All of those statistics are really scary and eye-opening for me to hear. I’m wondering what specific work does CTI do to make the roads in Connecticut more safe? And what are some of the new things that you’re working on?

Eric: So, we’re constantly looking at driver behavior. We’re constantly looking at trends that we’re seeing at the Institute. We also have a full-scale driving simulator. So, it’s a full-size vehicle that’s in the laboratory with 360-degree screens. We can essentially simulate a roadway environment. So, we’re doing all kinds of research, looking at human factors, human behavior. How do people react to different events that take place out on the roadway? But we’re also really interested in vehicle technologies. So, how does automatic emergency braking improve your safety? How does lane-keeping work? How do autonomous vehicles or self-driving vehicles, how can those types of technologies prevent crashes?

So, what we’re looking at is, we know that the driver behind the wheel is primarily one of the reasons that you see a lot of crashes occurring. I’m not going to say it’s the 100 percent reason. We do have roadway design issues that are out there. But, if every driver is paying attention all the time, the amount of crashes we have would reduce dramatically. We just know that drivers aren’t going to do that. We’ve kind of given up on drivers being good stewards on the roadway. So, how do we introduce technology? How do we make cars that cannot crash? How do we build vehicles that will drive themselves? I’m not necessarily looking to build a self-driving vehicle, but I’m looking to build a vehicle that would augment human behavior or augment human abilities. So that if a car recognizes it’s going to be in a crash, it will automatically stop or it’ll slow down—ways that we can improve technology or create technology that really prevents crashes from occurring in the future.

Mike: Now, when you do your work, are we talking mostly highways or are we talking the back roads of Connecticut too?

Eric: It’s really all over the place. So, we have a crash data repository set up. That’s one of the other tools that we use. So, we collect every single motor vehicle crash that occurs in the state. From police departments. Our database goes back to 1995, so we have over 30 years’ worth of crash data. So, we take all of that crash data, we’ve built some tools that will allow us to analyze the entire state and try and find areas or places where there may be opportunities to improve safety. So, we’re looking at the physical environment, and then we’re also looking at things like impaired driving. Are we seeing trends in impaired driving? So, we’re taking all of that data, compiling it, and then creating research projects to try and understand what’s actually going on out on the roadways.

Mike: So, I have another question for you. You know, I drive a car. It’s got a camera in the back. It beeps anytime I get near anything. It drives so smooth, you know, I can be going 85 and not even noticing.

Izzy: You probably shouldn’t be saying that on the podcast.

Mike: I saw you cringe a little bit when you talked about running red lights. What was that all about?

Izzy: He must need glasses.

Mike: Oh. So back to my question. But yet in 1980, I was driving like a Ford Zephyr that had none of that stuff. And in some ways, has improved or increased technology made it less safe? Is there an argument to that?

Eric: There is an argument to some of the digital technologies that are in vehicles. Obviously, nobody’s going to argue that ABS brakes made things less safe. They’re not going to say airbags made things less safe. Seat belts improved safety dramatically. But we’ve kind of reached this tipping point. And we see this a lot when we start looking at the introduction of Tesla. So, Tesla came in, they modernized the dash. You don’t have the center stack or screens that are there, just touch screens, and all the car manufacturers followed that trend. So now within vehicles, if you want to turn the volume up, you have to use a touch screen. So, it’s no longer—you can’t just reach down and turn a knob or reach down and push a button. You have to look down at that screen because there’s no haptic feel that’s there.

Eric: What we’re seeing is some car manufacturers are starting to come back on that so that they’re actually putting physical buttons back in so that you can interact with your infotainment system without the need for diverting your gaze.

Now, recently I was out in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, and what I saw there were center stacks or center dashboards that went from the driver’s seat all the way across the entire dashboard to the passenger side. And then they were projecting information up on the windshield. And then above the windshield was another display that showed up as a heads-up display that gave you your speed and turn directions.

It seems like there’s still this trend to pack as much technology or cool factor into cars without really much consideration of the impact it’s going to have on distractions and driver behavior.

Izzy: So, believe it or not, some of us still have actual driving cars. I will ride my 2012 Honda CRV until it’s the last day. And I swear by that. So, obviously there are standard cars, and now there are self-driving cars. What can the average driver do to be more safe on the road? And if you could specify a little bit between self-driving cars and just your plain old Honda CRV?

Eric: Sure, absolutely. So, your standard—I kind of go back to the 1995 Toyota Corolla. Very, very, very basic. The driver does 100 percent of the tasks. There’s nothing in there. You don’t even have cruise control. Like, there’s nothing in that vehicle that is actually kind of, quote-unquote, driving itself. And then from there, we have kind of a gamut or a whole array of technologies that have been added in—even things like simple cruise control. That’s an automation feature. The car itself is controlling the gas pedal or throttle.

As we kind of progress up, we end up with things like adaptive cruise control. So now we have radar that’s built into the cars. We have cameras built into the cars. It’ll recognize the car in front of you. It’ll match that speed, so you stay the same speed. It has cameras that will see the lanes on the roadway. It’ll stay within those lanes. So as long as you’re following that car in front of you, it can kind of lock in and prevent you from leaving the lane and prevent you from hitting the car in front of you. So, those are what we call ADAS features, or driver assistance features.

Once we get up into the much higher range, level five is fully autonomous. It means there’s no steering wheel, no pedals; the car’s driving itself. We don’t have those cars on the roadway yet. Those are still being put into development. Waymo has those vehicles that are out there, kind of on some test and preliminary basis, but they still have steering wheels. They still have some limited interaction. You may have seen a video recently of someone stuck in the Waymo car that was kind of stuck in a lot, kind of doing circles, calling for help, trying to get out of the car. So, these events still happen these days. These still take place. This technology is still very, very new. There’s going to be a long time, in my opinion, before we really have fully self-driving vehicles out on our roadways.

So, they’re going to have to deal with this mix between old cars and new cars. And there’s going to be people that are never going to give up their older vehicle because they know and trust the technology versus these newer vehicles that are essentially just computers on wheels.

Mike: What about impaired driving, drugs, and alcohol? With the laws changing in all kinds of states, you know, with cannabis and the age-old problem of drunk driving—is that getting better? Obviously, that’s another risk factor. Where do those things fit into your work?

Eric: So, we look at impaired driving a lot. Actually, every single fatality that occurs in the state, I get a toxicology report for that fatality. So, it comes across my desk. I’m constantly looking for trends we’re seeing within drugs and impairment. With the legalization of cannabis—now we had medical cannabis for a while—it’s not like all of a sudden we saw this flood of cannabis showing up in people’s toxicology reports. It’s been there for a while. People have been using it, even though it’s not been recreationally legal.

But we are seeing an increase in the number of people with cannabis in their systems. The problem with cannabis is that it will stay in your system for days and days and days after you’ve used or consumed it. That doesn’t mean you’re actually impaired. So, the problem we have right now is we have no definitive test to determine if a person is impaired by cannabis just because it shows up in their blood system. Alcohol is completely different. There’s tons of research on alcohol. We know that 0.08 is the legal limit. What we really see is around 0.05 is where you really start to see some of those impairments, and the state’s looking at trying to lower the BAC limit for alcohol.

But we’re seeing a pretty dramatic increase post-COVID in terms of people that are impaired out on the roadway. A lot of people started to turn to substances through the lockdown, trying to deal with some of their mental health issues, and we’ve seen kind of an increase in impaired driving as well.

Izzy: It’s crazy how all of these topics just come back and connect with each other. Like, I would never have thought of it that way. So, you mentioned earlier that, obviously, most of the time fatalities happen due to a driver, but there are some instances where there might be an issue on the roadway. What progress is being made to make the roads safer in Connecticut, and what do you think the future of highway safety looks like?

Eric: So, there’s a movement nationally called the Safe System Approach, and that’s looking at all different road users. It’s looking at all different parts and pieces of our transportation system—not only the human factors, human behavior piece, but education, technologies, looking at the roadways themselves. And part of that is a Complete Streets design. So, how do we redesign our streets or how do we design our streets to make sure we accommodate for our vulnerable road users? How do we build streets so that people actually travel what the speed limit is? Just because you put up a sign that says 25 miles per hour, people aren’t going to follow that sign if that road was designed for 45 miles per hour. People subconsciously know how fast they can travel on that roadway.

Eric: So, we’ve kind of neglected that in the past. So, the DOT is really embracing a Safe Systems Approach. They’re really embracing a Complete Streets approach. I’ve got towns that are reaching out to me basically saying, “How do we take some of our downtown areas? How do we start reinventing and redesigning those roadways to be safe not only for vehicles but for all road users?”

UConn was actually just awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Safe Streets and Roads for All program. So, we’re going to be doing seven different pilot programs here on UConn’s campus and be able to demonstrate those to towns across Connecticut on ways to improve safety through design and research.

Mike: You talk about the UConn campus, and there are so many different facets to this—pedestrian safety. I mean, with the invention of smartphones and earphones, nobody on campus is walking around talking to each other. They’re listening to music or podcasts or whatever. I mean, that’s got to really affect pedestrian safety.

Eric: Yeah. So, we see that a lot. People are walking down the roadway, crossing intersections, and they’re constantly staring at a device or, as you mentioned, they can’t hear what’s going around them because they have earbuds in. So, this is a major issue.

We’ve also seen an increase in impaired pedestrians as well. So, some of that increase and rise in pedestrians that we see being struck and fatally killed—they are above the legal limit for a number of drugs in their system. So, it’s not just one thing. So, we have to constantly look across the entire gamut of options for trying to improve safety and how we look at those things and how we start interacting and developing either educational programs or start working on the engineering side.

It’s a major issue. I see it with my own kids—I can’t get them off their phones to clean their rooms or do anything in the house. Everybody’s addicted to their phones at this point.

Mike: Yeah, you bring up kids. I mean, that’s a whole other thing for parents to be—they’re obviously worried about their driving but also worried about their children’s driving. That brings a whole new element of fear and concern, right?

Eric: Exactly.

Izzy: So, what we’re talking about—students having their AirPods in or they’re zeroed in on their phone and they’re walking across the crosswalk. Does that still fall into the old saying, like, the pedestrian always has the right of way? That’s still my responsibility as a driver though to make sure that I’m adhering to them no matter what condition they’re in, right?

Eric: Absolutely. I mean, I would take that approach as a driver that any obstacle in or around the roadway is my responsibility to watch out for. But in reality, it’s a shared responsibility. I mean, pedestrians should follow the laws, but drivers need to be aware, attentive. They need to make sure that they are aware of everything that’s around them and be ready at a moment’s notice to take action if something unexpected happens. We all make mistakes. We all have issues while we’re either walking or driving. So, a prepared driver really doesn’t get involved in crashes like we would expect.

Mike: So, for those folks that don’t know, the CTI is located on our Depot Campus here in Storrs, which is a mile or so away from the main campus. And you have a project that’s in the works and being developed—a test track of sorts. Tell us a little bit about that and where that stands.

Eric: Sure. So, out at the Depot Campus—for those who are not aware of the Depot Campus—it’s about seven miles north of main campus here in Storrs. It’s an abandoned, partially abandoned facility. That’s where my home is. We’re out in the Longley building on the Depot Campus. So, there’s a lot of abandoned buildings that are out there at that facility.

We started conversations with the university and actually found a developer that’s interested in building out a Smart Cities or autonomous vehicle testing facility. So, using some of that infrastructure that, due to contamination—whether it’s asbestos or PCBs—it’s extremely difficult to remediate those buildings. Or the buildings are on the historical register, so they can’t be torn down. So, these buildings are kind of stuck in place, but it’s a great opportunity to build in transportation infrastructure, whether it’s traffic signals that can see cars or traffic signals that can broadcast their phasing and timing to really start pushing the boundaries of some new technologies in a Smart Cities approach.

So, we have a developer on board. We’ve been working for the past couple of years on getting an agreement in place with the university that would allow us to start building out that infrastructure and then start bringing in car companies or bringing in infrastructure companies and pairing them up with graduate students or undergraduate students—getting some hands-on experience between students and industry and really starting to develop some new innovative technologies for traffic safety.

Izzy: A little birdie told me that seven miles away, no man’s land, you have quite the impressive Lego collection in your office.

Eric: We do. That’s another kind of artifact of COVID. During the COVID lockdown, we were looking for some ways to get staff talking, engaging with each other. So, we built out—it’s an eight-foot by eight-foot Lego facility or Lego case. We have parts and pieces within that that represent everything we do. There’s a car crash, there are solar panels, there’s a pavement laboratory or pavement being laid down on the roadway. And then each one of my staff has their own little Lego figure within the display. So, they can go and find themselves. Every year, new staff that’s added gets to pick out their Lego guy. Between Christmas and New Year’s, I put their Lego figure out into the display, and then they come back after the Christmas break and try and find themselves within the Lego city.

Mike: Maybe we’ll get a Lego podcast studio or something like that.

Izzy: I mean, I’m creative, but I’m not that creative.

Mike: Oh, I think we can come up with it. Eric, we’re so impressed with the work you do. We talked about different areas of the university that are kind of the front porch for UConn, whether it’s athletics or Jorgensen or the good people at the Rudd Center. And the work you do is just, it’s so important, but it also gets the UConn name out there. Talk about where you think you fit in the overall mission of the university.

Eric: So, I truly see myself as kind of the link between Connecticut DOT and the university. And the Connecticut DOT constantly comes to UConn asking, you know, we have this issue, can you help us solve it? I don’t have the answers to all those problems, but the great thing about being at a university is that there’s someone here at the university that can do almost anything and everything. So, the ability for me to go to computer science and find somebody, or the ability to go to psychology and find somebody—I love working at a university because every possible skill you need is here within the university system. So, I see myself as kind of the conductor or coordinator between the DOT or the traveling public and trying to understand safety issues that are out there. And I love interacting with a wide variety of people on a daily basis. Every day is a new challenge.

Mike: Eric, thanks for all the good work you do, and hopefully, you know, at the end of the day, you’re saving lives. That’s the goal.

Izzy: And Eric, for the record, if you need anyone to volunteer to be studied with one of those new self-driving cars, my 2012 Honda CR-V would be looking for an upgrade. So, I’ll stay open to that if you ever need someone.

Eric: Absolutely. We’ll also bring you into the driving simulator. We always need study participants to do a wide variety of driving tasks with brand new technology that may not even be out on the roadways yet.

Izzy: I would love to do that. And while we’re there, I want to see the Lego display too.

Eric: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mike: Sounds great. Thanks, Eric, for joining us today.

Eric: Thanks for having me.

Mike: Izzy, have a great day.

Izzy: Oh, I will. Thanks, Mike.

Mike: And thanks, everybody, for listening to the UConn 360 Podcast, and we’ll catch you next time.