pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

PacTrans had two consortium partner universities participate in the 2023 Lifesavers Conference on Highway Safety Priorities in Seattle, Washington. The Lifesavers Conference showcases the latest research, evidence-based strategies, proven countermeasures, and promising new approaches for addressing the nation’s most pressing traffic safety problems and focus on the 4 Es of traffic safety: engineering, emergency response, enforcement, and education. PacTrans’ collaborator, the Northwestern Tribal Technical Assistance Program (NW TTAP) Center, was among the exhibitors, leveraging the opportunity to discuss safety challenges on Tribal roads and to network with professionals in traffic safety and Tribal transportation.

For the second year in a row, PacTrans partner, Oregon State University, had two students successfully selected as Lifesavers Traffic Safety Scholars. Kezia Suwandhaputra and Syed Baqir Ul Husnain were named 2023 Lifesavers Traffic Safety Scholars and attended the Lifesavers National Conference. Both students are pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees in Civil Engineering and were two of 33 U.S. and international students selected through a competitive application process. This is the eighth year of the Traffic Safety Scholars program, which provides college students the opportunity to attend the Lifesavers Conference, the largest gathering of traffic safety professionals in the U.S. 

The program’s goals are to showcase the diversity of opportunities in traffic safety and encourage students, regardless of discipline, to pursue a career in a dynamic field that draws from a variety of disciplines from engineering, education and enforcement to communications, business, marketing, medicine, public health, political science, counseling, and more. The Lifesavers TSS Program provides scholarships to help full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of fields defray the cost of attending the nation’s largest gathering of traffic safety professionals. 

The NWTTAP exhibit booth featured an overview of the TTAP program and focused on connecting regional and national partners with their respective TTAP Center to demonstrate where to find resources and who to contact. Also, the NW TTAP Center advertised the open Assistant Director position, which is seeking to be filled on a rolling basis. Many of the attendees were excited for the return of the regional TTAP model after there was a brief national TTAP pilot. In addition to exhibiting, they participated in several sessions to learn about the current state of traffic safety and to collect resources to build the capacity of Tribal transportation programs to improve traffic safety on Tribal lands.

The NW TTAP Center also had the opportunity to connect with Tribal transportation engineers and federal agencies at the conference, building partnerships with the Indian Highway Safety Program, National Judicial College, and Tribal Injury Prevention Resource Center as well as regional Tribal transportation engineers.