Rachael Thompson Panik, AICP, PhD
President's Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology
The way we move through space unequivocally shapes our lives. Rachael wants to make sure it’s for the better.
Transportation impacts us profoundly, from our health to our access to opportunity and our quality of life. Transportation also kills ~40,000 people in the United States every year -- an unacceptable toll given that traffic deaths are a preventable and predictable outcome of a system that is not designed for human needs. Rachael is dedicated to changing this story and ensuring that fewer lives and impacted by traffic deaths.
Transportation Needs in Daily Life
Schoner, J., Holmes, T., Bemis, C., Panik, R. T., Vandegrift, D., Spohr, L., Gong, S., Edgerton, D., Yang, S., Hudson, A., Sanders, R., Brandt-Sargent, B., Schall berg, H., Lassila, N., Maaske, S., and Ehrlich, J. "Transportation needs in daily life: Using human stories to shape regional transportation planning and policy in the Minneapolis - St. Paul Metro Area." Accepted, Pre-Print: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Safety + Health Magazine
Rachael Thompson Panik, PhD, shares about her research on student attitudes towards safety with the National Safety Council's magazine, Safety + Health.
ArDOT Transportation Research Committee Conference
Rachael Thompson Panik, AICP, PhD, was invited to speak at the Arkansas Department of Transportation's Annual Research Committee Conference about the Safe Systems Pyramid.
Kinetic Energy and Risk
Meghan Mitman, Rachael Thompson Panik, and Leah Shahum summarized key findings from the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting's first roundtable on Transportation and Public Health, focusing on implementation process for the Safe Systems Pyramid.
Safety Perceptions
Panik, R. T., Nazemi, H., Saleh, J. H., Fitzpatrick, B., and Mokhtarian, P. L.
"Precursory elements of safety culture: Exploratory analyses of engineering students safety attitudes." Journal of Safety Research (2024)
Safe Systems Pyramid
David J. Ederer, Rachael T. Panik, Kari E. Watkins, and Nisha Botchwey. "The safe systems pyramid: A new framework for traffic safety." In revision: Transportation Interdisciplinary Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2023.100905.