Lawrence E. Decina, MS
Lawrence E. Decina is a Senior Associate at TransAnalytics where he has worked since the company was founded in 2001. Previously, he worked as a Senior Research Psychologist for The Scientex Corporation (1994-2000); Manager/Research Psychologist of the Human Factors Division at Ketron, Division of the Bionetics Corporation (1980-1994), and Research Assistant at the Franklin Institute Research Center (1975-1980). Mr. Decina serves as our company’s Principal Investigator on an array of projects, having a focus on occupant protection and other traffic safety related issues such as enforcement, driver licensing, older driver capabilities, countermeasures to reduce impaired driving, teen driving, and driver distraction. He has successfully led over thirty research grants, contracts and subcontracts for Federal and State government clients as the Principal Investigator or Project Manager since the late 1980’s.
Mr. Decina is a nationally recognized expert in occupant protection, especially in enforcement programs, countermeasures, literature reviews, and observation studies. He has led many efforts in best practices for child restraint use. His work in this area also spans law enforcement initiatives, public education and national information campaigns. Significant products of Mr. Decina’s work include evaluation of seat belt and child restraint law enforcement programs and national observation surveys of use and misuse of child restraints and vehicle LATCH systems for NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. He has also conducted studies for Safe Kids USA to identify and examine the impact of their car seat inspection programs; and has developed a guidebook for observing all types of restraint systems for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
His other research activities include NHTSA projects investigating technology to train novice drivers and evaluations of automated enforcement systems. For the Federal Highway Administration and National Cooperative Highway Research Program, he has participated in projects covering traffic engineering and control issues with driver behavior. He has also been involved with developing resource guides to highway transportation information; examining transportation research report distribution and access, and providing recommendations for the Technical Report Documentation Page.
Mr. Decina has published over twelve peer-reviewed journal articles and over thirty technical reports addressing diverse topics of highway safety, driver licensing, and other transportation issues.
Mr. Decina received his M.S. and B.S. in Information Science and Psychology, respectively, from Drexel University. He is a long-standing member of the Transportation Research Board, and is active in its Occupant Protection and Traffic Law Enforcement Committees. Mr. Decina is a certified child passenger safety (CPS) technician.