The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) presented its 2015 highway safety awards to two individuals who have made a national impact on improving highway safety and five programs focusing on the nation’s most pressing highway safety challenges at its Annual Meeting in Nashville.
The most prestigious honor, the James J. Howard Highway Safety Trailblazer Award, to James Fell, senior scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, who played an instrumental role in bringing about one of the most remarkable U.S. traffic safety achievements: the reduction of alcohol-related fatal crashes.
The Kathryn J.R. Swanson Public Service Award was presented to former GHSA Executive Director Barbara Harsha, who led the headquarters office for 25 years, from 1988 until her retirement in 2013. Harsha worked tirelessly to support state highway safety directors and their staffs to ensure that states had the tools, resources and data needed to develop their lifesaving programs and transitioned GHSA into an organization that focused on improving the skills and building the capacity of its membership.
GHSA also presented five Peter K. O’Rourke Special Achievement Awards for outstanding highway safety accomplishments during the previous calendar year to the following programs:
• ADEPT Driver teenSMART® Program, a computer-based training program that uses neurocognitive training to improve crash avoidance skills in teenage drivers.
• California Highway Patrol Safety and Farm Labor Vehicle Education Program, an effort to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities attributed to farm labor vehicles (FLVs) in California through a multifaceted traffic safety strategy of vehicle certification, enforcement, inspection and outreach.
• Ocean City Police Department Walk Smart Program, a collaborative approach to reducing the number of pedestrian crashes in a Maryland beachfront community.
• Be Responsible And Keep Everyone Safe (B.R.A.K.E.S.), an organization founded in North Carolina by NHRA drag racing star Doug Herbert in the wake of the tragic loss of his two young sons in a highway crash in 2008.
• Virginia Highway Safety Office Traffic Records Electronic Data System Ignition Interlock Project, an effort to standardize and automate the statewide ignition interlock workflow in the wake of the passage of the commonwealth’s all-offender ignition interlock legislation in 2012 that saw ignition interlock installations increase 87 percent.
Read more of the original article in GHSA News Release
