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Grant P. Johnson, Registered Traffic Engineering in the State of California, has been taking on numerous expert witness cases for defense and plaintiff cases. A champion of safety, he has a common sense approach to finding the details needed to win the case on the merits of the evidence and potential for defense or liability.
An extension of Traffic Engineering,
Expert Witness Research and Testimony
Grant P. Johnson, TE is a registered Traffic Engineer in the State of California, the only state in the union with this special distinction. Now a requirement of many government jurisdictions to qualify traffic studies, the Traffic Engineer is being asked to sign documents as an authority on the subject of all things pertaining to traffic and regulation. In Expert Witness testimony and research, the title of Traffic Engineer enhances credibility. He is currently working on several cases as an Expert Witness throughout Northern, Central, and Southern California cities and counties, including working with Caltrans.
PRISM's custom design actually helped to slow speeds through installation of special striping and pavement markings, using the available pavement space to relocate striping, adjust the stop bars to better locations, and better define the travel pathways (less ambiguous) to achieve smoother flows of vehicles and bikes. PRISM creates movies from our videos to clearly show the complete picture from many viewpoints.
Using this capability to quickly make the movie, we can showcase how drivers behave in the accident location, good or bad behavior, which helps to establish the patterns with visual proof. All accident records in the vicinity are researched to see if there are significant data or not, to show a pattern of similar accidents. Mr. Johnson is an expert in regulation and design standards such as the MUTCD and related materials and manuals on lighting, road and intersection design. He can determine if a roadway has been properly or improperly designed, and also knows the traffic engineering law and principles of safety related to all traffic control devices in use today. He also personally drives through the site and inspects traffic conditions and sight distance from the drivers point of view, to make a determination if there are factors related to safety compromises or safety enhancements for all drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists. His engineering work in China enhanced specific skills for great attention to detail. In the physical transportation world, he has extensive experience in checking complex plans for construction of China's major High Speed Rail projects dealing with regulations and standards and safety conditions.
Given the top inspection responsibility there on site as the Chief Site Engineer (CSE), he was in responsible charge of all quality control and safety on a 70 kilometer section of high speed rail construction, a new HSR rail line connecting Beijing to Shenyangin Northern China. The job included:
As a part of the job, surprise inspections in the field were conducted to make sure plans were followed closely by construction companies, and to document all activities and exceptions for correction by photo and video on the numerous variety of construction sites. Regular formal meetings were held with the national HSR authorities in the Communist government, where he reported on compliance on the site and for all aspects of construction and safety protocols, as well as quality of materials. He kept a daily journal, a spreadsheet database, and prepared weekly extensive reports written in English and in Chinese Mandarin officially documenting all of this information for the government. Grant says: "The work was challenging and trained my eye for looking for all details of transportation construction, and installations of what was done right and what was done incorrectly." When I examine the transportation systems in the US where an accident took place, whether it be a bike, a pedestrian, a train, freeway, city street, or two-lane highway, I'm looking for the big picture of whether the traffic control or road design or construction was done properly with safety in mind, according to the accepted design standards such as the AASHTO Green Book, the MUTCD, or from Engineering Judgment by Inspection and Analysis and Experience.
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AuthorGrant Johnson, registered Traffic Engineer, shares insights and experiences from around the world. Archives
June 2023
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