Laura Fraade-Blanar is an NIH/NIA post-doctoral fellow at the RAND Center for the Study of Aging. Her work to date sits at the intersection of health, technology, and transportation. As a post-doctoral fellow at RAND, she applies her background in public health and injury epidemiology to current and emerging transportation questions. Her recent work has focused on autonomous vehicle safety, especially risk measurement methodologies and safety policy; and older driver safety, specifically around driving habits and crash risk.
Before her fellowship at RAND, Fraade-Blanar’s work centered on exploring risk and methods to measure risk in injury prevention. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington explored older driver crash risk and older worker occupational injury risk, analyzing the mismatch between worker health and job demands. As a research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), she assessed risk and risk mitigation related to motorcyclists, air bags, and large truck underride using a variety of methods. While a consultant at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), her work supported assessments of injury and violence reporting systems in the Americas.
Selected Publications
Fraade-Blanar L, Blumenthal M, Anderson, J, Kalra N. , Measuring Autonomous Vehicle Safety: Forging a Framework. , RAND Corporation (RR-2662), 2018
Fraade-Blanar L and Smith JP, "Cognitive change and driving behavior among older drivers," Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2018 (forthcoming)
Fraade-Blanar L, Ebel BE, Larson, EB, Sears JM, Thompson HJ, Chan KC, Crane PK. , "Cognitive decline and older driver crash risk," Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 66(6), 2018
Fraade-Blanar L, Hansen RN, Chan KC, Sears JM, Thompson HJ, Crane PK, Ebel, BE, "Diagnosed dementia and the risk of motor vehicle crash among older drivers," Accident Analysis and Prevention, 113, 2018
Ecola L, Popper SW, Silberglitt R, and Fraade-Blanar L, The Road to Zero A Vision for Achieving Zero Roadway Deaths by 2050, (RR-2333), 2018
Fraade-Blanar L and Kalra N, Autonomous vehicles and federal safety standards: an exemption to the rule, (PE-258-RC), 2017
Blanar L, Sears JM, Chan KC, Thompson HJ, Crane PK, Ebel BE. , "Older adult occupational injury risk in association with job demands and health state," Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 59(2), 2017
Nevin P, Blanar L, Maeser J, Kirk AP, Kaufman R, Cramer G, Freedheim A, Hitchcock L, Ebel BE. , "'I wasn't texting; I was just reading an email …': a qualitative study of distracted driving enforcement in Washington State," Injury Prevention, 23(3), 2017
