Marisa Auguste gets upset when she sees other drivers texting on their cell phones, reading maps, or putting on makeup while they\u2019re whizzing down the highway.<\/p>\n
Auguste has good reason to be concerned. April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month according to the National Safety Council<\/a>, and if you didn’t know, Auguste will tell you there were 7,472 distracted driving crashes in Connecticut in 2015 and that they accounted for about 7 percent of all crashes last year. Distracted driving was involved in 4 percent of all fatal crashes in Connecticut in 2015 and 9 percent of all crashes resulting in injury.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Auguste\u2019s job after all to keep track of such things. As a new behavioral analyst with UConn\u2019s Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center<\/a>, a part of the School of Engineering, Auguste spends countless hours poring over state crash reports, looking for patterns and insights in cases where driver behavior was part of the cause.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can make cars safer and we can make roads safer, but nearly 90 percent of motor vehicle crashes can be attributed to some kind of human error,\u201d says Auguste, who joined the CTSRC last May. \u201cSo we can\u2019t talk about traffic safety without talking about behavior, especially when you consider all of the texting and driving, talking on the phone while driving, and checking of social media while driving that people are doing today.\u201d<\/p>\n With a master\u2019s degree in criminal justice with a concentration in victimology and a bachelor\u2019s degree in sociology, Auguste says she is fascinated by the different aspects of human behavior. As a social scientist, she has an insatiable curiosity to know why<\/em> people behave as they do.<\/p>\n \u201cHuman behavior is just so interesting. It\u2019s not exact and I love it,\u201d Auguste says. \u201cEveryone\u2019s different and usually people have different motives as to why they do things. I just want to know why. That\u2019s my thing. Initially, I wanted to be an FBI profiler. But now I\u2019m using my education to analyze behavior, driver behavior. Ultimately, I hope to make people feel better and safer and that\u2019s why I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n We can make cars safer and we can make roads safer, but nearly 90 percent of motor vehicle crashes can be attributed to some kind of human error. — Marisa Auguste<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Part of Auguste\u2019s job is analyze reams of crash data the center has collected under a new accident reporting protocol recently implemented in Connecticut. The crash reports, which now include very specific details about whether the vehicle operator was distracted, have been uploaded to an electronic statewide Crash Data Repository<\/a> operated by the Center. Access to this kind of detailed aggregate statewide transportation data \u2013 which is also available to the public through the repository website \u2013 was not previously available.<\/p>\n \u201cMarisa is a great addition to our staff,\u201d says associate research professor Eric Jackson, director of the CTSRC. \u201cHer background in criminal justice and sociology will assist the CTSRC as we start to research driver behavior and try to understand and modify risk-taking behavior while driving.\u201d<\/p>\n Auguste is part of a rapidly growing staff at the CTSRC, which opened in 2013 with support from the Connecticut Department of Transportation and other state agencies. The center recently received a DOT grant for $10 million over the next five years that will support the hiring of 12 new staff to assist state transportation officials with safety analysis.\u00a0Jackson hopes to bring in a full-time epidemiologist to also assist with research.<\/p>\n Auguste says that besides having crash data, the researchers will also be looking at EMS data, toxicology reports, and medical examiner reports: \u201cWhenever someone is involved in a crash, we want to see what\u2019s going on with their behaviors. Did they have drugs or alcohol in their system? If so, what types of drugs or alcohol? Knowing that helps us home in and figure out what our target populations are and what issues need to be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n