An Online Community for Traffic Safety Professionals

http://pub6.ezboard.com/btrafficsafety

Dr. Jeffrey Hadley

National Study Center of Trauma and EMS

School of Medicine

University of Maryland

Baltimore, Maryland

AND

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

Baltimore, Maryland

Funded by a grant from the Maryland Highway Safety Office

1. The potential of the Internet is not based on the huge network of computers, but on the ease of communication it creates between millions of people around the globe.

2. There are thousands of people who are professionally involved in traffic safety, but have no ability to “connect” with the vast majority of people working on traffic safety issues.

A couple premises to consider… .

1. A very active online community that “connects” everyone can be a significant catalyst in achieving our mission to improve the completeness, accuracy, accessibility, uniformity, and timeliness of crash data.

2. This interaction within and between all types of traffic safety professionals will create new and unique opportunities for collaboration, thus also accelerating the advancement in traffic safety in many ways unforeseen at present.

A couple conclusions …

It is important for the online community to involve all types of traffic safety professionals.

These include the following… .

Researchers

Safety Program Professionals

Traffic Record Managers

Police (crash investigators)

Policy-makers

Other professionals

• Managers of crash data maintained at the local, state, and national levels

• Motor vehicle administrators responsible for maintaining driver-specific information (e.g., violations)

Other databases with traffic safety data:

• Hospital discharge• Medical Examiner• Trauma Registries• Consumer Product Safety Commission

• 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States

• As “our” crash data collectors, their role is critically important to improvement in traffic safety

• The danger is that they can become disconnected with the big picture and the importance of a complete and accurate crash report

• Trade associations

• Nonprofit organizations

• Transportation industry

• Automobile manufacturers

• University-based researchers

• State DOT/public health department research groups

• Many federal agencies with traffic safety related mandates, including NHTSA, NSC, BTS, NCSA, FHWA, and FMCSA.

• Other for-profit research groups (e.g., Liberty Mutual Research Center)

Frequent and productive interactions between all types of traffic safety professionals is critical to achieving our common goals in traffic safety.

Today, this interaction is limited at best…

Researchers

Safety Program Professionals

Traffic Record Managers

Police (crash investigators)

Policy-makers

Other professionals

Established interaction but limited means for police to provide feedback to superiors (that can be anonymous in our online discussions)

Researchers depend on the databases maintained by these managers, but no research-driven process in determining what data is collected. • To build a greater appreciation by

police on the importance of high quality data

• Facilitate local collaborations between researchers and police, e.g., to get the data that is missing from national databases and address local safety issues.

• Local collaborations between researchers and police have potential to increase the total number of variables collected worldwide

Usefulness of data to researchers is limited by the lack of common ID fields for record-by-record linkage

There is also no assurance that variables in common are coded similarly.

There is presently no efficient means of obtaining research data from state agencies.

Online discussions that include all types of traffic safety professionals will open up many more doors …

Researchers

Safety Program Professionals

Traffic Record Managers

Police (crash investigators)

Policy-makers

Other professionals

Now for some specifics about the web site…

… an Ezboard.com web application.

The Community Forums

Why have this online community?

• Our Mission

• What do YOU think about the potential of this community?

Community Housekeeping

• Ground rules

• Not a registered member?

• Be a forum moderator!

• Is your profile complete?

• How to make your online identity anonymous

• Support our community with ezsupporter

Community Discussion

• About Community Discussion

• Started by … Traffic Safety Researchers

• Started by … Traffic Record Managers/Owners

• Started by … Crash Investigators (police)

• Started by … Traffic Safety Program Professionals

• Started by … Other Traffic Safety Professionals

About Community Discussions

1. Community members are asked to only start a new topic in the forum designated by their category of traffic safety professional.

2. Topics that generate the liveliest discussions will be moved to their own forums in a planned “Hot Topics” category (and ordered by popularity).

The organization and content of discussions will be created in a bottom-up fashion dependent on the interests of members. This will be facilitated in two ways.

The Community Forums (continued)

Miscellaneous

• TraCS General User Feedback

• Online Reporting System for Near-misses and Crashes

• Legislative Matters

• Non-virtual Meetings

Current Affairs

• News and Announcements

• Events and Conferences

• Grants and Funding Opportunities

• Transportation Safety Job Openings

Private Forums (proposed)

• Traffic Records Coordinators in each state

• “Decision-makers” in all agencies

• Steering committees (e.g., in BTS data sharing pilot)

• ATSIP committees (e.g., for future forum planning)

• Any group wanting an “invite-only” forum

• Option to be notified by email when someone replies to your post

• Ability to poll the membership in any forum topic (a multiple choice question).

• Opportunity to rate each discussion’s usefulness on a 1 to 5 scale with a running average rating

• Most active discussions automatically listed first in each forum

• A live chat function

Some User Features

Personalized “my account” home page that includes:

• A person’s most recent posts

• Ability to create/edit one’s profile

• Establishing preferences to, e.g., view only new topics

• Set the number of replies displayed per page

• Enable an “ezinbox” to send and receive private messages from other members, etc.

Some Administration Features

• A “control center” that provides an easy and powerful management of content, assignment of moderators, etc. etc.

• Control over who is allowed to read and post in community

• A “post flood” safety check and spam blocker protects board from destructive excessive posting

• Weekly back-ups and free restores if necessary

• Ability to assign a personal icon that will quickly identify a member by type of traffic safety professional

• Extensive community user statistics

• Highly scalable technology will allow our community to grow without fear of system limitations

Joining the community

• Registration asks for some basic profile information and to assign yourself a user name and password.

• Visitors can read but not post messages

• It is free to participate, though you will be presented with an opportunity to pay for an “ezsupporter” membership.

• Forum moderators will be recruited from the membership.

• Volunteers will also be needed to share administrative duties.• Private forum for all moderators and administrators to discuss any problems or changes, etc.

Promoting the community

A “viral marketing” approach: If everyone in this room signed up and emailed 10 people who signed up, and each of those people recruited 10 more, etc., etc.

Member use of the “Tell a Friend” featureCommunity involvement of the “decision-makers”, whose participation will have a ‘trickle-down” effect… while also requiring that all their employees join and participate

Obtain support from police organizations, and, provide a TraCS forum for police to give feedback, etc.

Partnerships with traffic safety associations and organizations associated with all types of traffic safety professionals, including ATSIP.Exhibit booth at all traffic safety related conferences

• Results from member ratings on each forum’s usefulness

Evaluation Criteria

Measures of web site activity

• Number of active members

• Number of topics started by members (threads)

• Total page views and number of posts

• Frequency distribution of number of posts by individual members

Evaluation Criteria

• Number of published studies that examine traffic safety problems specific to a particular city or region, which reflect collaboration with local police departments

• Number of missing data for existing variables in crash databases

Measures of data quality

• Number of “data gaps” that prevent complete understanding of crash epidemiology

• Number of published studies using regional data sets, that is, involving collaboration with state-level traffic record managers

• Number of published studies using linked databases

The endless possibilities … and the potential to benefit traffic safety in ways that only the future will tell.

Back to the big picture… !

An online community can be the place to uncover mutually beneficial collaborations that can together improve the availability, accessibility, uniformity and timeliness of crash data.

Imagine… thousands of people taking brainstorming to a new level for the benefit of public safety, while being rewarded with new friends and collaborators, and new progress toward making the roads safer.

We cannot underestimate the power of human interaction to reach our common goals, nor the opportunity to fully harness that energy with this web application.

Finally …

• An extremely large online community of traffic safety professionals from around the country and world will greatly increase the number of people who will want to meet at the next Traffic Records Forum!

• The result will also be an increased interest in joining the Association of Traffic Safety Information Professionals (ATSIP).

• The benefits of online discussions between all types of traffic safety professionals would become obvious, further accentuating the value of an in-person gathering of a large and active community as again illustrated in the next slide.

Researchers

Safety Program Professionals

Traffic Record Managers

Police (crash investigators)

Policy-makers

Other professionals

An Online Community for

Traffic Safety Professionals

http://pub6.ezboard.com/btrafficsafety

Also please check out my online reporting system for near-misses and crashes at:

http://www.accident-report.org