Dr. Eric Hildebrand (BScEng'85, MScEng'89), professor of civil engineering and the co-ordinator of UNB's Transportation Group, has been saluted nationally for his work in improving the safety of roads and highways. Hildebrand is the recipient of the prestigious Sir Sandford Fleming Award from the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering for his work in improving transportation safety across the country.
Hildebrand has been passionate about improving safety in transportation over his 30-year career at UNB, acting as an adviser and investigator to Transport Canada on collision investigations, as well as working closely with provincial governments and private contractors on highway design and safety. “I don't want to do research that's highly theoretical and once you are done it sits on the shelf,” says Hildebrand. “I always try to have the objective of sharing the research with others and making a change in practice or policy.”
Much of his work has centred on the growing demographic of senior drivers. “Vehicle design and highway design have started to reflect the increased proportion of senior drivers,” he says. “Newer signs are brighter, the fonts are bigger, pavement marking materials are brighter and so on to accommodate older people that, for example, have cataracts in their eyes.”
The accolades come at a time when road safety issues are dominated by the aging driver demographic and the onset of self-driving vehicles. Hildebrand says autonomous vehicles present an opportunity for increased transportation safety. “About 90 per cent of all collisions are at least partly the fault of the driver,” says Hildebrand. “If we turn this over to computers, then that's where we can make a huge difference in terms of safety.” He believes self-driving vehicles could quadruple roadway capacity – saving governments billions of dollars in new highway construction costs.
He’s modest about the recognition.
“The award isn’t about me, it is recognition for the work a lot brilliant students have done over my 30-year career. I’ve helped students along, but they’re the ones that produce the research.”
