pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

Early last May, a project led by PacTrans director and associate professor of transportation engineering at OSU, David Hurwitz, was recognized at the Vice Provost Awards for Excellence Celebration, an annual event that showcases 10 outreach and engagement projects that are particularly exceptional.

The project received an Outreach and Engagement Award for Excellence, which honors a project’s efforts to create and develop healthy communities and economies. The project focused on “Mitigation of Lane Departure Crashes in the Pacific Northwest through Coordinated Outreach”, aiming to educate the public on lane departure crashes.

The award-winning project was composed of a competition challenging high school and college students to create a public service announcement. Dozens of submissions were received and resulted in six winners from each participating state. The winners were honored with a plaque and a monetary prize.

The project also consisted of 18 interactive presentations regarding local transportation safety issues given to 488 elementary and middle school students. Following each presentation, the young audience was asked how crashes could be prevented, prompting them to create 408 drawings, 124 narratives, and participated in four interviews with researchers about their ideas, which were then used in word clouds and mosaics representing each state in the PNW.

Congratulations to David and his team for completing their work on the project and receiving the award!