Closing date: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 (11:59PM EST)

This position is located in the Office of Safety Programs, Office of Safety, Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC. The incumbent serves as a transportation specialist and provides advice to Safety Leadership on highway safety programs.

You will serve as a nationally recognized authority and advisor to Safety Leadership in identifying, developing and delivering safety workforce competency programs and products to reduce the number and severity of highway crashes, and other highway safety programs. You will also serve as the co-champion for the FHWA Safety Discipline and the program manager for the Roadway Safety Professional Capacity Building Program (RSPBC). As Safety Discipline co-champion, you will work toward improving the capacity of FHWA’s workforce in safety related competencies. As the RSPBC Manager, you will also help a broad range of roadway safety professionals acquire the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to implement safety programs, strategies, and countermeasures.

The ideal candidate for this position is a mid-career or senior level professional with experience in identifying, planning, and implementing new national program initiatives and leading the development and implementation of programs for outreach and public information to improve the proficiency of highway safety professionals.  He/she has a high degree of independence in planning, prioritizing, scheduling, and carrying out assignments and maintaining effective working relationships as a leader or member of teams or working groups.  In addition, the ideal candidate has excellent person-to-person and written communication skills.

Duties:

• Provide leadership in technical, programmatic engineering and policy assistance to FHWA field offices, State and local agencies, and other internal and external customers to implement safety programs for all levels of government.
• Provide resources to help safety experts and specialists develop critical knowledge and skills within the roadway safety workforce.
• Lead the development and implementation of programs for outreach and public information to improve the proficiency of highway safety professionals.
• Coordinate with other Federal, State, and local agencies and professional organizations and serve on intra-agency task forces with partners to improve the safety workforces’ knowledge, skills, and abilities.
• Plan and conduct briefings and regional and national meetings for FHWA, State, and local safety professionals and other highway safety-related organizations.
• Identify customer’s needs and provide resources to facilitate the deployment of roadway safety tools.

Click here to learn more and to apply.

Not your average coffee cup rescue, for sure.. and please do not attempt this on the road. EVER! For the love of god, it is a pretty dangerous move by the motorcyclist and am glad no one got injured in the process of saving that silly cup perched on the rear bumper of an SUV..

The federal government has already committed nearly $11 billion in stimulus money to help get road, bridge and environmental projects off the ground, administration officials told Congress on Wednesday.

“I believe we have already achieved enormous success,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the House Transportation Committee, giving a progress report on infrastructure money allotted under the $787 billion economic stimulus bill passed in February.

Lahood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, told the panel his department had made decisions on $9 billion dollars in projects around the country out of Transportation’s $48 billion share of the stimulus package.  However, he was less specific about the jobs directly resulting from stimulus spending.

It was originally estimated that the $64 billion in the stimulus for infrastructure — for transit, high speed rail, aviation, federal buildings and Army Corps of Engineers projects as well as roads and bridges — would create or sustain 1.8 million jobs.

But so far, reports on new jobs were mostly anecdotal. The Transportation Committee said its survey of state and local transportation officials revealed that work had begun on 263 highway and transit projects in 30 states, putting about 1,250 workers back on the job.

D.J. Stadtler, Jr., chief financial officer for Amtrak, said it expected to produce about 4,600 jobs in the first year of the stimulus with investment of $1.3 billion.

Unemployment in the construction industry soared to nearly 2 million in March, about 21.1 percent compared with 13 percent a year ago.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, top Republican on the committee, questioned the job-creation effectiveness of the program, saying some projects might take three to four years to get off the ground. But he said he would withhold judgment, saying, “We have to give folks a pass at this juncture.”

The Government Accountability Office, in a report prepared for the hearing, also raised questions about the ability of states and Washington to track how the money is being spent. But it gave some states high marks for moving the money quickly.

(Source: Yahoo News via Jalopnik; Photo: Jalopnik)

The unnamed couple, a 28-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman, were caught in the act late on Easter Sunday by traffic police on the E18 highway, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Oslo.

Officers who clocked the couple’s silver Mazda 323 racing at 133 kilometres per hour in a 100 zone realised they were doing more than just breaking the speed limit, police told AFP.

“It was veering from one side to the other because the woman was sitting on the man’s lap while he was driving and doing the act, shall we say,” said Tor Stein Hagen, a superintendent with Soendre Buskerund district police.

“He couldn’t see much because her back was in the way,” he added.

“Why they did it on a highway with such a high risk we don’t know.”

After following the couple for nearly a kilometre, officers pulled the car over at a service station.  He now faces fines worth several thousand Norweigan crowns and a lengthy driving ban for reckless driving. When the case goes to court it should be an open and shut proceeding, as the police recorded the carnal activities with their dash cam for use as “evidence” later on.