Events

Distinguished Lecture Series

The highway-safety problem: An assessment of analytic challenges and the future role of AI

Presented by:

Dr. Fred Mannering

Executive Director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida.

Abstract:

Highway safety has remained a persistent problem, particularly in the United States where driver behavior and legislative initiatives have tended to mitigate the effectiveness of safety innovations. From a data analytics perspective, analysts have struggled to predict the effectiveness of safety innovations due to temporal shifts in driver behavior, drivers’ risk compensating behavior, the selective nature of those choosing to purchase vehicles with advanced safety features, and other factors. This talk presents various issues relating to commonly used data-analytic approaches and provides a brief comparison of machine learning models and advanced statistical/econometric models. Finally, the potential of AI applications in human-driven and autonomous vehicles is introduced along with a discussion of some of the safety-related complexities that will be encountered in the forthcoming autonomous/human-driven vehicle environment.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Fred Mannering is the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida. He was previously Head of Civil Engineering and later the Charles Pankow Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University, Professor and Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington, and an Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Masters degree from Purdue University, and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work has been cited over 40,000 times in Google Scholar, and he has published over 180 refereed journal articles, two widely adopted textbooks, and over sixty other publications (conference proceedings, project reports, book reviews and commentaries), and has given over 150 invited lectures, keynote speeches, and presentations at professional conferences.

He is the Founding Editor and currently Chief Advisory Editor of Elsevier Science’s Analytic Methods in Accident Research (Web of Science 2024 Journal Impact Factor = 12.6) and was previously Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier Science’s Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. Some of his awards and recognitions include: Web-of-Science Highly Cited Researcher (6 consecutive years 2019-2024); Council of University Transportation Centers Lifetime Achievement Award (2021); most highly-cited author (highest total citations and citations per paper) in the 50-year history of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention (2020); Eno Foundation’s “Top 10 Transportation Thought Leaders in Academia” (2016); Charles B. Murphy Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (Purdue University's highest undergraduate teaching honor, 2013); induction into Purdue University’s “Book of Great Teachers” (2013); and the Arthur M. Wellington Prize (2010), James Laurie Prize (2009), and Wilbur S. Smith Award (2005) all awarded by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Date: Friday, November 7th
Time: 1 PM - 2 PM
Location: Mulva Autoriaum

Lunch will be provided!

Questions? Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Professor, Joe J. King Chair in Engineering; Research Webpage

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