Marshall Featured on Science Friday

Posted: May 13, 2025

Wes Marshall, CTIPS director for the University of Colorado Denver, continues to garner press attention for his 2024 book, Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System. Marshall was recently interviewed by Flora Lichtman for Science Friday, a program that airs on more than 500 public radio stations across the United States. Marshall’s interview aired April 18. Listen here.

The book description reads, "Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, Killed by a Traffic Engineer shows how traffic engineering 'research' is outdated and unexamined (at its best) and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety, quality of life, equality, and planetary health. Marshall examines our need for speed and how traffic engineers disconnected it from safety, the focus on capacity and how it influences design, blaming human error, relying on faulty data, how liability drives reporting, measuring road safety outcomes, and the education (and reeducation) of traffic engineers."

Marshall is professor of civil engineering with a joint appointment in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Colorado Denver. He is also the director of the CU Denver Transportation Research Center and co-director of the Active Communities/Transportation research group. His work focuses on transportation teaching and research dedicated to creating a more sustainable and resilient world, particularly in terms of road safety.