By: Charlotte Crystal

A number of states established differential speed limits in 1987 — allowing cars to go 65 mph while big trucks were kept to 55 — as the federal government eased back on the 55-mph speed limit imposed nationwide to conserve fuel during the 1970s oil crisis.

But research conducted by Nicholas Garber, U.Va. professor of civil engineering, showed that the dual speed-limit system was not effective in reducing two-vehicle traffic accidents involving trucks and cars. Moreover, there was evidence that differential speed limits even increased the rate of two-vehicle accidents. While his heavily statistical report examining the impact of differential speed limits on traffic safety didn’t make the bestseller lists in 1991, it did capture the attention of dozens of highway officials around the country and led to changes that made the nation’s highways safer.

Based on Garber’s work, many of the states that had imposed the dual speed limits lifted them and reinstituted uniform speed limits for trucks and cars. (Virginia returned to a uniform 65 mph highway speed limit in 1994.)

The speed limit study is just one of many examples of the ways in which Garber’s research on traffic operations has been applied to improve highway safety in Virginia and elsewhere in the United States and West Africa.

This year, in recognition of the more than two decades of work in the field of civil engineering — in research, teaching and professional service — the National Academy of Engineering elected him a member. A private, independent institution, the NAE advises the federal government on engineering and technology issues that relate to public policy.

“Election to the National Academy of Engineering is considered to be the highest honor that can be bestowed on an engineer by his or her peers,” said William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering and a faculty member in U.Va.’s Department of Computer Science. “Nick is the ninth member of the U.Va. engineering faculty to be so honored and reflects the high caliber of our faculty. I am pleased to welcome Nick to our ranks.”

Garber’s many other accolades include the 1996 D. Grant Mickle Award from the Transportation Research Board, the 2002 Distinguished Professor Award from the University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, the 2002 Edmund R. Ricker Award form the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and a Commemorative Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Garber is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Great Britain.

He also is the co-author, with Lester Hoel, professor of civil engineering at U.Va., of the widely used textbook, “Traffic and Highway Engineering,” published by Brooks/Cole.

Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1936, Garber received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of London in 1961. He worked for a few consulting firms in England over the next few years, until receiving a call from his homeland. On the verge of independence from Great Britain, the young government of Sierra Leone was calling educated Sierra Leoneans to return and contribute their skills to build a strong, independent country. Engineers, in particular, were receiving personal phone calls.

Garber agreed and went to work for the country’s Department of Public Works, where he soon was named second in command for the western region. For the next two years, he designed roads and bridges around Freetown. Then he was sent upcountry as the head engineer for the Kenema-Kono area, where he managed the design and construction of a clinic for children under 5, a hospital, and several concrete bridges to replace the wooden bridges then in service. He later returned to Freetown and supervised the construction of an extension to the Port of Freetown.

After four years, Garber decided he’d done his part and chose to continue his education. He left the country to pursue graduate studies in civil engineering in the United States, at Carnegie Mellon University. Garber received his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon in 1971, and after graduation accepted a teaching post at the State University of New York-Buffalo. But the winters in upstate New York were more than the West African had bargained for. So when a teaching position opened up at the University of Sierra Leone, he grabbed it, later becoming the first dean of the school of engineering there.

Eight years later, it was time for a sabbatical, which Garber had planned to spend at Arizona State University. But during a telephone conversation with Hoel, one of his former Carnegie Mellon professors and then-chairman of U.Va.’s Department of Civil Engineering, Hoel persuaded Garber to consider a position at the University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, which he did, beginning in September 1980. Garber was offered a permanent faculty position in 1981 and has been here ever since.

That year, Garber was the only African or African-American at the engineering school and one of only about two dozen African-American faculty at the University. While the situation for minority faculty at the University has improved since then — there are currently more than 100 black, full-time faculty at U.Va., and half a dozen at the engineering school — still, the numbers are not what they might be, Garber said.

Garber said Hoel and his wife Unni extended a warm welcome to Garber, his wife, Ada, and their three daughters. The Garber family met other newcomers through a “Welcome Wagon” group, in which they were the only black family. At a dinner party hosted by the Garbers, one of their guests said that that was the first time he had been in a black man’s home.

The Garbers also joined Trinity Episcopal Church, which helped broaden their social circle. The proximity of friends and relatives in Washington, D.C., also helped ease their entry into their new life in Charlottesville.

Ada Garber soon opened a daycare center, which she operated for more than two decades, helping many women faculty and administrators at the University pursue their careers while at the same time rearing families. The Garber children also prospered. Now adults, Alison, 42, is an architect; Valerie, 40, recently gave up her job as a regional manager with Kaiser Permanente to help her husband run his private insurance company; and Elaine, 33 manages rental property in Maryland.

In addition to his teaching and research, Garber also has contributed many hours of professional service to the Transportation Research Board, an arm of the National Academies. His work in this area has included participation on several national policy committees established by Congress to study speed limits in work zones, possible limits to the size and weight of large trucks permitted on the nation’s highways, and characteristics of traffic that might affect the frequency and seriousness of automobile accidents.

Now an American citizen, Garber still travels to his homeland from time to time to see his elder sister (all his other siblings have emigrated either to the U.S. or to the U.K.) and to serve as a consulting engineer on various government projects.
“I like to go back and look at the roads I designed,” he said.

He admits to no regrets.

“There were different actions I could have taken over the years,” Garber said, “but I took God’s directions and I thank Him for that.”