Archives: March 2024
Roadside Chat - Keep your peeps safe. Buckle your bunny!
March 29, 2024
Whether your kids are in the backseat or your best friend is riding shotgun, we all want our “peeps” to be safe when we’re behind the wheel.
Making sure every person in your vehicle is properly buckled up can go a long way to reducing the number of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, and friends who die every year on Iowa’s roadways.
Roadside Chat: 3-point seat belt for the win!
March 22, 2024
Since 1986, the three-point line has been helping college basketball teams rack up points. Did you know the original three-pointer in safety terms is even older and has saved millions of lives?
The first 3-point seat belt was sold by Volvo in Sweden in 1959 after the automaker hired an engineer, Nils Bohlin, to find a better way to keep people safely inside a vehicle. Bohlin, who was formerly an aviation engineer who had previously helped develop ejection seats for aircraft, came up with the idea that has saved millions of lives.
Personnel updates for March 1 to March 14, 2024
March 21, 2024
Information supplied by the Business Systems Bureau
Roadside Chat - Select a sober ride. It's a winning pick.
March 15, 2024
Whether you’re completing an NCAA basketball bracket or enjoying a night out with friends, the choices you make can have lasting impacts. Pick wisely on your brackets and you’ll have bragging rights. Choose not to drink and drive and you may save lives.
It’s never been easier to leave the keys behind and let someone else take the wheel.
Personnel updates for Feb. 16 to Feb. 29, 2024
March 8, 2024
Information supplied by the Business Systems Bureau
Roadside Chat - Buckle up - only clocks should spring forward
March 8, 2024
Getting ready to “spring forward” this Sunday? Springing forward to gain an hour of extra daylight is great, but if you are behind the wheel you want to make sure everyone in your vehicle stays firmly planted in their seat by making sure they buckle up, every trip, every seat.
As a driver, a seat belt will help keep you in the correct position to control your vehicle should you run into something unexpected. Quick maneuvers to avoid an animal or debris on the road can make you shift in your seat if you’re not buckled up. This shift can cause you to lose control of the vehicle and potentially crash.
How you can help keep Iowa roads safer
March 4, 2024
One of the main things you need to be safe on the road is predictability. That means getting from Point A to Point B without any surprises. Whenever an unexpected incident happens, whether it is a crash, stalled vehicle, debris on the road, or anything else that could impact traffic, your trip becomes less predictable and more hazardous.
At the Iowa DOT, we rely on a lot of tools to help keep your trip as predictable as possible. Two of our core values, Safety First and Customer Focus, are put into practice doing just that in our Traffic Management Center in Ankeny. The dedicated staff monitors hundreds of roadside cameras 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and fields incoming calls from law enforcement and other sources. They then work to make sure you have the information you need by lighting up the message signs along the road and posting information to the 511 system.
Roadside Chat - Less likely to crash when phone is stashed
March 1, 2024
Reading a quick text or checking email for a few seconds is typically harmless - unless you’re behind the wheel.
Recent research shows that 97 percent of Americans now own a cell phone of some kind and 90 percent of those phones are smartphones. In nearly every state including Iowa, texting while driving is illegal, yet we see people doing it all the time.
You may not realize how many people are impacted. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 32,657 people died in distraction-affected crashes from 2012 to 2021 in the United States. In 2020 alone, data shows that 342,652 people were injured in crashes where distraction was a factor.