The James J. Howard Highway Safety Trailblazer Award is GHSA's highest award. The award honors an individual for sustained, outstanding leadership in endeavors that significantly improve highway safety. The recipient of this award must have undertaken a concerted, long-term effort to make our nation’s highways safer and made a significant contribution to the field of highway safety. The recipient must have established and implemented programs or been responsible for notable advancements in technology or research throughout the years that yielded a demonstrated national safety impact.
2024 Awards
Nominations for the 2024 Howard Award closed on April 5, 2024. The award will be presented during the GHSA 2024 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, September 7-11.
2023 Awards
The 2023 Howard Award was presented to T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, PhD, MPH, during the GHSA 2023 Annual Meeting in New York City.
Left: 2023 James J. Howard Highway Safety Trailblazer Award winner T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, Ph.D., MPH (l) and Nevada Office of Traffic Safety Administrator Amy Davey (r). Right: Dinh-Zarr speaks at the Highway Safety Awards Luncheon after accepting her award.
Past Winners
Dr. Marilyn Bull has fought for the most vulnerable occupants of our roadways—children with special needs. Without her unfailing dedication to a small and previously overlooked area of highway safety, it is unlikely that such improvements would have ever been made.
