Volpe Center Highlights
Safety
Focus |
Safety |
Mobility |
Human and Natural Environment |
Economic Growth and Trade |
National Security |
Published and Presented
Promote public health and safety by working toward the elimination of transportation-related deaths, injuries, and property damage. |
National Accident Sampling System Training (NHTSA)
On September 16 to 18, the Volpe Center's Center for Transportation Information hosted a training event for a select group of NHTSA's crash investigators. The group was trained on the totally re-engineered National Accident Sampling System (NASS) Electronic Data Collection System, which is now in prototype form. The new system is state-of-the-art, using pen-based technology, computerized sketching, and digital cameras capable of creating a data base that integrates all text reports, photographs, sketches, etc. on a sample of approximately 300,000 auto accidents annually. Information from the new system, to be implemented with crash investigators across the nation in January 1997, will be available to NHTSA analysts on demand at their desk-top computers, resulting in dramatic improvements in data availability, timeliness and productivity. The NASS system is used by NHTSA and auto industry analysts to determine safety problems in highway and vehicle design, to evaluate potential countermeasures, and to develop standards designed to promote highway safety.
FAA-NASA Symposium on the Continued Airworthiness of Aircraft Structures (FAA)
For well over a decade, the Volpe Center has played leading roles in FAA's effort to identify the causes of aircraft structural fatigue and failure. Recently, Messrs. George Neat and John Brewer, both of the Vehicle Crashworthiness Division, participated in the FAA-NASA Symposium on the Continued Airworthiness of Aircraft Structures, in Atlanta, GA. Mr. Neat co-chaired a session on corrosion in aging aircraft. Dr. Brewer presented a technical paper on "Improving the Damage Tolerance of Bonded Structures Via adhesive Layer Barriers."