Lauren Marchetti walks away, safely
The creator of National Walk and Bike to School days retired after 52 years at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center.
In April, Lauren Marchetti retired from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center after 52 years of service to the state. The creator of National Walk and Bike to School days conducted innovative research to advance community, state and national practices.
Marchetti most recently served as a senior strategic adviser focused on advancing safe walking and bicycling, with a focus on youth and children traveling to school. Before that, she served as director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School (2006-16), and associate director of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (1999-2006), both housed at HSRC. Marchetti’s project experience included promotion of child restraints and seat belts; efforts to deter speeding and driving while intoxicated; and the promotion of safe walking and cycling.
She led HSRC projects for several state and federal agencies and nonprofit organizations.
“Priorities change, but being flexible and opportunistic is imperative,” Marchetti said in a recent conversation. “Part of it is following leadership at the federal and state level. But figuring out how to make something work at the local level was the biggest piece of the puzzle. And I loved that part of my work at HSRC.”
Here’s a partial list of Marchetti’s research projects:
Walk to School Day
As part of a project for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Marchetti established the Partnership for a Walkable America and worked with the National Safety Council to hold the first-ever National Walk to School Day event with Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1997. Her project team then joined with representatives from Canada and the United Kingdom to establish International Walk to School Day in 2000. This effort was recognized in 2002 with the Stockholm Challenge Award for Sustainable Cities.
Under Marchetti’s leadership, the National Center for Safe Routes to School established National Bike to School Day in 2012. The events now known as Walk & Roll to School Day and Bike & Roll to School Day have grown in participation each year, and surveys of event coordinators indicate that more than half of events have inspired safety policy changes or engineering improvements in tens of thousands of communities. Learn more about National Bike to School Day, which is celebrated on the first Wednesday in May each year.
Drinking on college campuses
Marchetti and Dr. Rob Foss, also at HSRC, worked together to get then-Chancellor Michael Hooker to allow researchers to talk directly to Carolina students about drinking habits and collect blood alcohol concentrations from randomly selected students when they returned home at night. Carolina, with local researchers and state and federal project funding, was the first university in the U.S. to conduct this type of behavioral research.
Marchetti says that seeing the effects of her work at a local level was the highlight of her job. (Graphic by Gillie Sibrian/UNC-Chapel Hill)
The basic message of the campaign, which was clear and easily understood by students, was: “Whether it’s Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, two out of three UNC students return home with a .00 BAC.” This research (summarized in this 2000 final report) transformed how the college drinking issue was both understood and approached by the safety community
Teen-led campaigns
Other projects involved working with teens to develop anti-drinking and driving campaigns and, more recently, youth-led transportation safety activities. She also helped develop a national system for local schools to track travel data trends, which earned a Harvard Bright Ideas in Government Award.
Seat belt safety, Turtle-style
In one of the less traditional efforts of her career, Marchetti put together a seat belt campaign using the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. “The creators allowed us to put a seat belt on Raphael and use the slogan ‘Cow-a-buckle, Dude,’” she said.
