ATSSA is now accepting nominations for the association’s National Media Award. The annual award is presented for informative and balanced reporting on the transportation and roadway safety industry. In 2020, ATSSA will mark its 8th year of honoring the winning candidate and nationally recognizing their efforts, which highlight the importance of roadway safety in the United States.

In recent years, there has been an uptick in collaboration between entities within the roadway safety infrastructure and automotive industries as Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technologies progress and enter U.S. roadways. In a sweeping effort to ensure traffic control devices and roadway infrastructure effectively support the Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) of CAVs, manufacturers and groups like the Automotive Safety Council, 3M, SAE International, and ATSSA are working together to uncover the gaps in information and needs to help these vehicles perform at an optimum level. 

ATSSA has been providing roadway safety training for nearly 50 years, and we are not stopping there. This year, ATSSA will roll out new courses on sign retroreflectivity to further serve individuals in the roadway safety infrastructure industry. These online training courses will add to ATSSA’s wide range of existing course modules, which include flagger training, guardrail and barrier installation and maintenance, high friction surface treatment, roadway paving and maintenance, pedestrian safety, and temporary traffic control. 

ATSSA's flagger training courses have been teaching individuals how to be safe and effective flaggers for nearly 50 years. These courses help trainees understand why proper flagger operations are essential, identify standard flagger control references, and learn standard flagger practices for many situations—both expected and unexpected.
While the association has taken great strides to provide and adequately train individuals across the country, there still are infrequencies when it comes to having consistent standards on a national scale.

ATSSA's board of directors recently approved the formation of a Traffic Signals Unit as a membership unit category within the association earlier this year at the March board meeting.

On June 19, 2019 at the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (NCUTCD) Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Task Force Meeting, updates on signage and pavement marking uniformity were the main topics of discussion. With CAVs entering U.S. roadways every day, the need for uniformity is growing exponentially. Transformational technologies on CAVs raise new questions for groups like the NCUTCD, such as signage that appears on the exterior of CAVs. For instance, many autonomous vehicles (AVs) manufacturers have their own signage displays on the exterior of the vehicle that alert human drivers and pedestrians of the CAV’s intentions on the roadway.