CARSP SNN Video Interview Transcript (Winter 2025)

Date: October 3, 2024

Interviewer: Dr. Emily McCullogh, York University, CARSP Safety Network Newsletter Editor

Interviewee: Dr. John Morrall, current president of the Canadian Highways Institute, former professor of civil engineering at the University of Calgary, and longstanding road safety advocate. Dr. Morrall holds a PhD in transportation from the University of Waterloo and has received several awards for his contributions to transportation and road safety engineering.

Emily: Can you tell us a fun fact about yourself?

John: Well, I'm in my 80s, I'm still working as a consultant, and agencies and consulting firms have been very good at giving me all the work I can do since I retired from the university 24 years ago.

Emily: You're still very valuable to them.

John: Well, there's a shortage of people working in the road safety and transportation engineering areas. Since all roads involve active transportation in the last 10 years it keeps me busy, engaged, and meeting people new people.

Emily: How did you get involved in the road safety world?

John: My first job was with a small group of engineers working on the Go Transit planning in the mid-60s. It started operation along the Lakeshore, but at that time I wasn't involved in safety. Of course, safety was always mentioned, but not in the way it is today. When I started at the University of Calgary, a few things happened. I got involved in research and planning and design for passing lanes on two-lane highways because of problems with crashes. I also became a member of the highway capacity manual on the two-lane highway section. In the early beginnings, safety was considered part of highway capacity, but it was implicit, not like it is today, explicitly included. Then I got asked to be an expert witness on a rollover case where the road transitioned from four lanes to two lanes in a very short period of time without any warning. And so that was my introduction to road safety, as an expert witness. And then, of course, I belonged to TAC (Transport Association of Canada) and ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) committees going back into the 60s. And then when CARSP came along I started attending CARSP conferences.

Emily: What year did you first attend CARSP? 

John: The one out in Calgary with notable worldwide experts, such as Dr. Ezra Hauer.

Emily: So you've seen an evolution of the importance of safety being included in education and engineering. As someone who has worked in the road safety world for several years, what are some important markers of progress that you've seen in the Canadian context, or globally, with regards to road safety? 

John: One of the first strides was seat belts in cars. Around 1965 or 1966 the Ford Motor Company offered seat belts as an option, and the price was around $60 and they were just lock belts. I would also give MAAD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) a lot of credit because they brought attention to the general public about drinking and driving. Then the of crash testing of vehicles in Europe and the United States started, which provided ratings. Before that the measurements of speed were done with a couple of tubes in the road, so photo radar helped and more policing, so the public, the manufacturers of cars, and the public agencies were starting to take safety much more seriously. I also remember, in Toronto, the introduction of formalized crosswalks. So, all these things started to come into play. And then on the design side, a major stride was the explicit evaluation of safety in road design. I can trace it back to the 60s with roadside safety, design and measurements of safety, performance functions, and collision modification factors that have come a long way, as well the adoption of Vision Zero by many agencies as a target, and the Safe Systems approach more recently. Those last two have been quite important because, for engineers and general analysis of who/what is causing crashes, the blame was always put on the driver and the road user, and that has now turned around to make designers of roads and transportation facilities accountable for improving road designs. Things like the Collision Modification Factors and safety performance functions help in that regard. I'd like to give a lot of credit to Dr. Ezra Howard as being one of the leaders in this area, not just in Canada, but worldwide.

Emily: Wonderful! I really appreciate you bringing up the Vision Zero target and the Safe System approach. It's really wonderful to see the progress. 

John: You're quite welcome Emily. Organizations like the TAC, CARSP, and ITE deserve a lot of credit, especially CARSP, because that brings together a whole range of people working in different areas but all part of the road safety community and we're learning from each other. I remember at one conference after I gave my paper someone in the audience asked a question that I never thought about. That person was in the medical profession and he asked, “do you take into account the location of hospitals when you design highways?” And my answer was, “not explicitly that I'm aware of,” but it is certainly a good question because in the traffic engineering area we take a lot of care to indicate how a driver should get to a hospital by the ‘H’ sign quickly in case of emergency. So, this emphasizes the interdisciplinary aspect of road safety. It involves human factors, people in enforcement, people in the medical profession, etc. Once I was invited to talk to the doctors at Foothills Hospital, which is right beside the University of Calgary where I was teaching, and they said “we see the victims of car crashes all the time in the emergency ward and we're just wondering what engineers are doing with respect to road design and road safety.” So, that connection was made as well. 

Emily: What advice would you give folks who are interested in pursuing a career in road safety and road safety research?

John: For engineering undergraduate students there's so many choices, such as mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, biomedical, etc. So, I think it's incumbent on universities and technical schools to have an introductory course or two on road safety just to spark an interest and this can be done several ways. When I was a professor I used to invite an engineer who headed up the Transport Canada crash unit in Calgary when it existed and sometimes someone from the hospital as well, that saw the victims. So that's at the undergraduate level. For young people graduating, from all disciplines, who are interested in road safety the next step would be to join organizations like CARSP because they have opportunities like the student paper competition, for example. Joining the Transportation Association of Canada is another area. And I know this might seem a little daunting for a recent graduate, but you can sit as a friend of the committee initially and just listen to the proceedings. And there are student rates too for attending that conference. The last one is to join the ITE. Many cities in Canada have a local ITE chapter. The local chapter usually has one meeting a month. Our local chapter here has a student paper competition and there's an opportunity to participate and hear a different speaker each month. Joining these organizations, even as a friend of the committee or once you're working professionally for a government organization or consulting firm, there are many opportunities to get involved with helping to write the next edition of a design manual or a traffic signing and pavement marking manual, for example. Those would be my suggestions for how to get started in the road safety area. 

Emily: Wonderful! Thank you John. It is great to hear about options for folks interested in getting involved in road safety. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience today before we sign off?

John: I appreciate the opportunity to pass on my experience and I think it's the job of people like myself to do mentoring. I have been doing mentoring for a few larger companies because the full-time engineers are so busy that they've asked me to come in and talk once a month to the younger people. I think that's another area that really needs exploring further that I haven't mentioned because a number of the older folks in the road safety areas, they're retiring so the mentoring and knowledge transfer is very important at this stage.

Emily: Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with our CARSP audience today.

John: You're very welcome, Emily and thank you for the good questions.

Emily: Anytime John! For our audience, if you're interested, or if you know anyone who may be interested, in sharing their road safety wisdom and work in a future CARSP member interview like this one, please reach out to info@carsp.ca.