Advancing Equity in Road Safety Policymaking

In a conversation with The Regulatory Review, leading transportation and mobility scholar Jeffrey Michael discusses how policymakers and scholars work to promote road safety in policy and practice.

Michael describes the breadth of transportation and mobility policy—a field, he emphasizes, with far-reaching implications for public health. As the scope of the field expands, Michael notes, “a much broader range of people” are invited to the table, creating space for collaboration across public health, transportation, and safety professions.

Central to improving road safety and shaping injury-prevention strategies, Michael explains, is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). He calls attention to the agency’s role in developing policies, which demands strategic partnerships among safety and mobility stakeholders and across branches of government. Also critical to domestic efforts to reduce road injuries, Michael underscores, are scholars and community advocates—partners who can shape equitable “policy in the public interest” to reach “communities, neighborhoods, and vulnerable road users.”

Michael is a distinguished scholar in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an expert in transportation and mobility policy, with research focusing on pathways to improve domestic and international road safety. Within the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, Michael coordinates the New Mobility Initiative—an effort to form evidence-based and public health-oriented policies for developing mobility products and services. Previously, Michael was an associate administrator at NHTSA, where he served for three decades.

Michael’s leadership and scholarship have been recognized widely, including by an appointment as the Leon S. Robertson Faculty Development Chair in Injury Prevention at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy and the conferral of the Presidential Rank Award from the U.S. Department of Transportation. His recent research examines how emerging technologies can promote safety and health equity in transportation and mobility services.

The Regulatory Review is pleased to share the following interview with Jeffrey Michael.

The Regulatory Review: How would you describe the scope of transportation and mobility policy? What drew you to the field?

Michael: Of course, the implications for transportation, safety, and mobility have been far-reaching for at least 100 years. But our awareness of the way mobility affects determinants of health, the benefits and risks of various modes of transportation, and the way safety affects both transportation and mobility continue to expand. In fact, it is difficult for many of us in the field to maintain this broad perspective in our day-to-day work. Our institutions still tend to segregate public health, transportation, and safety professions, and this affects the vision of those of us who have spent decades in one of these silos. I am optimistic that with their more expansive view, our younger colleagues will overcome some of these walls.

Fortunately, our expanding scope of awareness is inviting a much broader range of people to the mobility field. When I entered the field nearly 40 years ago, the attraction was narrower. I came in as a petrol-head—as the British say—looking for a way to make my fascination with vehicles more socially acceptable. There are fewer petrol heads in the field now, which is probably a good thing.

TRR: How has your work at NHTSA informed your career path and research approach?

Michael: I was fortunate to be at NHTSA for 30 years, long enough to observe how the agency interacts with other safety and mobility stakeholders and to see how the range of special interests interact in policy development. The agency plays a central role in these dynamics but can only succeed by working strategically with stakeholders. My viewpoint may be a bit parochial, but when I hear comments about NHTSA’s performance, I frequently wish there were more understanding of these dynamics and the agency’s role in policy development.

TRR: At what point in your career did your focus and interests shift to public health and policy research?

Michael: Public health and policy development are very much part of NHTSA’s mission, so I think of my career as a single path. I was lucky enough to be able to move from the agency to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which connected me to a wonderful group of people who are very thoughtful about health policy. This greatly expanded my potential. NHTSA and public health academics use different tactics but are very much aligned in their objectives.

TRR: The Center for Injury Research and Policy at Johns Hopkins University focuses on redefining “injury as a pressing public health problem and promoting injury research as a scientific discipline.” As an affiliate of the Center and the former faculty development chair in injury prevention, what is your role in changing how the public and policymakers think about road safety?

Michael: I like to think of myself as a facilitator of mobility policy in the public interest. Hopefully I am living up to this aspiration in some small way. Some of this work involves research, including public opinion polling about preferences for mobility policy. Much of my role is bringing stakeholders and special interests together to find policy pathways that serve common interests.

We were able to do this with our Safe System Consortium, which convened about 20 public health and transportation organizations to develop a consolidated set of recommendations for the U.S. Congress as it formulated the current highway bill. This is where an understanding of the dynamics among special interests is very useful. I am also able to do some teaching at Johns Hopkins that I hope will motivate young public health professionals to choose a career focusing on mobility issues.

TRR: You have researched international and domestic strategies for improving road safety. How might U.S. policymakers learn from program development in other nations to advance domestic efforts to prevent road injuries?

Michael: Traffic deaths are a leading cause of death globally, so there are smart people around the world working on solutions, and there is a lot to learn. To their great credit, the U.S. Congress and the Biden Administration have taken big steps in recent years toward the Scandinavian concept of Vision Zero, which is much more than a slogan.

Vision Zero is a rational approach to transportation system design that prioritizes the protection of everyone using the roads. It takes long-term commitment and inspired leadership to make this kind of change. We have a good start but need to stay the course to get our traffic death rate down.

TRR: As you evaluate the role of emerging technology in injury prevention strategies, which innovations hold the most promise for reducing health disparities in road injuries?

Michael: The technologies that are most promising for reducing health disparities are those that protect pedestrians, such as Automatic Emergency Braking with Pedestrian Detection and Automatic Speed Adaptation, since pedestrian fatality rates are higher among lower income and minority populations, and the beneficiary of the protection does not need to be a new car purchaser.

Also effective in closing gaps in risk will be those safety technologies that are mandated for all new vehicles rather than installed on only higher-end models. A 2024 final rule from NHTSA puts Automatic Emergency Braking in that category, and a proposed rule requiring driver impairment prevention technology in all cars promises to save more than 10,000 lives per year. That would be an incredible savings.

TRR: In your view, what roles do community engagement and grassroots advocacy play in shaping policies that are designed to achieve health equity?

Michael: We have made substantial progress in road safety, but it is important to remember that our efforts to make vehicles and road users safer are only about 50 years old, and our methods still need a lot of refinement. For example, some of the most effective safety strategies to date have been mandating seat belts in cars, passing mandatory use laws, and conducting aggressive seat belt law enforcement. These efforts were tremendously effective at the population level, saving close to a half million lives.

We know, however, that traffic enforcement has not been equitable. We need to start looking beyond population-level evaluations to see the impact of policies on communities, neighborhoods, and vulnerable road users. Community engagement will be the key to this next level of progress.