Transportation and Ethics 24 PDH Discount Package

This online engieering PDH course provides instruction in engineering ethics through a case study of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The minimum technical details needed to understand the physical cause of the Shuttle failure are presented. The disaster itself is chronicled through NASA photographs. Next the decision-making process, especially the discussions occurring during the teleconference held on the evening before the launch, is described. Direct quotations from engineers interviewed after the disaster are used to illustrate the ambiguities of the data and the pressures that the decision-makers faced in the months and hours preceding the launch. The course culminates in an extended treatment of six ethical issues raised by Challenger.

This 3 PDH online course is intended for all engineers who are interested in gaining a better understanding about the ethical issues that lead to the Challenger disaster and how they could have been avoided.

This online engineering PDH course contains updated recommendations excerpted from the 2001 handbook. The recommendations do not constitute a new standard of required practice but are instead intended to supplement existing standards and guidelines in the areas of highway geometry, operations, and traffic control devices.  The recommendations provide guidance that is firmly grounded in an understanding of older drivers' and pedestrians' needs and capabilities, and can significantly enhance the safety and ease of use of the highway system for older persons, and for the driving population as a whole.

In 1998, FHWA published the Older Driver Highway Design Handbook, seeking to provide highway engineers with practical information linking the declining functional capabilities of older road users to the need for design, operational, and traffic engineering enhancements keyed to specific roadway features. Early experiences with the recommendations, including extensive feedback from local- and State-level practitioners through workshops conducted for departments of transportation across the country in 1999 and 2000, indicated a need to revise and update this resource. The result was a new handbook, the Highway Design Handbook for Older Drivers and Pedestrians, published in 2001.

The course also provides supplemental technical information not found in the full handbook.  The information is provided to explain (1) how specific diminished capabilities lead to age-related driving problems; (2) license renewal requirements and distinctions for older drivers in each State in the U.S.; and (3) how and why to conduct visibility measurements to ensure that various pavement marking treatments covered in the Handbook serve the needs of older road users. These materials are included to support practitioners in exercising the engineering judgment often called upon to reach implementation decisions.

This 7 PDH online course is intended for civil and transportation engineers concerned with the design and maintenance of road systems.

This online engineering PDH course discusses the use of safety shoulders as travel lanes to increase the capacity of existing highways.  A succinct overview of efforts to use left or right shoulder lanes as temporary or interim travel lanes is presented.  The impact on highway performance, operations, safety, maintenance, enforcement, incident response, and costs is discussed.  Detailed case studies are presented for four U.S. states and three European countries.

This 7 PDH online course is intended for civil, highway and transportation engineers involved in transportation planning, design and implementation.

This online engineering PDH course is a primer on managed lanes and provides the transportation engineer or planner an overview of the implementation and operation of managed lanes.

Many transportation agencies face a growing demand for increasing road capacity, even though budgets are static or increasing very slowly.  As a result, the agencies are considering using lane management strategies that regulate demand, separate traffic streams to reduce turbulence, and utilize available and unused capacity.  Application of such operational policies is evolving into the notion of "managed lanes."  A managed lane is typically a "freeway-within-a-freeway" where a set of lanes within the freeway cross section is separated from the general-purpose lanes.

This 2 PDH online course is intended for civil, highway and transportation engineers involved in transportation planning, design and implementation.

This online engineering PDH course describes the findings of the team and presents its recommendations for U.S. practice. This course contains material that should be required knowledge for anyone concerned with pedestrian and bicyclist issues in the U.S.

Pedestrian and bicyclist deaths accounted for 14 percent of U.S. highway fatalities; for example, 14% in 2008.  As a result, the FHWA's Office of Safety established pedestrian and bicyclist safety as one of its top priorities, and the FHWA, together with several agencies, sent a team of twelve U.S. pedestrian and bicyclist specialists to Europe to study European approaches to pedestrian and bicyclist safety and mobility. The countries visited (Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) were chosen because of their innovative approaches to non-motorized transportation, as well as the potential transferability of their policies and practices.

This 5 PDH online course is intended primarily for traffic engineers interested in improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety and mobility.