Institute of Transportation Engineers -- ITE

Paul Gray Hoffman

The fourth ITE Honorary Member, Paul Gray Hoffman, had a distinguished career as an industrialist and statesman. He was always interested and dedicated to constructive highway traffic and safety programs. Perhaps his unique contact with traffic engineering occurred in 1925 when as a distributor for the Studebaker Corporation in Los Angeles Mr. Hoffman succeeded in establishing the Albert Erskine Bureau for Street Traffic Research at Harvard University, which subsequently moved to Yale University and is now headquartered at Pennsylvania State University as the Bureau of Highway Traffic. For many years this was almost the only place to receive a year of graduate study in traffic and transportation engineering.

He was a founder of the Automotive Safety Foundation and served as its first President from 1937 to 1942 and as Chairman until 1948. As Chairman he broadened the foundation's program greatly and in 1946 served as the keynote speaker of the First White House Conference on Traffic Safety.

In 1957 he became the donor of the annual Paul Hoffman Award for Distinguished Professional Services in Highway Safety. Mr. Hoffman in his later years left traffic and safety work and became active in the United Nations Development program.

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