ABA International Fellows
Ron Van Houten
Dr. Ron Van Houten is professor of psychology at Western Michigan University. He is one of the few people to publish in both the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, thus contributing to both the basic and applied aspects of our field. He is best known for his work in traffic safety. Since the early 1980s, Dr. Van Houten has conducted the most systematic work in the field on highway speeding and failing to yield to pedestrians—the two most common causes of death on the road. He and his colleagues have examined the effects of a variety of interventions in an elegant series of comparative and component analyses conducted at multiple urban sites in Canada, Israel, and the U.S.A. The most impressive attributes of this body of work are the methodological innovations he has introduced to the study of driver and pedestrian behavior and the comprehensive scope of the studies. He is a former associate editor of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, former chair of the Transportation Research Board Pedestrian Committee and current chair of its papers subcommittee, and a member of the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Many of the safety treatments he has developed have contributed to rule making and are in everyday use.