The Governors Highway Safety Association paid tribute to this past year’s traffic safety leaders and handed out its most prestigious award to Adrian K. Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in recognition of his career at IIHS.

The awards ceremony was part of GHSA’s annual meeting held last week in Louisville, Ky.

Lund, who is retiring in January, received GHSA’s James J. Howard Highway Safety Trailblazer Award.

“Throughout his 36-year career at IIHS, Dr. Lund led projects contributing to policy changes, business changes, and behavioral changes that have saved tens of thousands of lives and spanned a wide range of issues that impact the safety of all road users,” IIHS said in a released statement about the awards. “Under his leadership, IIHS changed the new vehicle marketplace to make safety a selling point and provided the research that directly impacted state highway safety programs.”

Other notable winners at the awards ceremony included William L. Hall, a senior research associate with the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, and Trenda McPherson, the state bicycle and pedestrian safety program manager at the Florida Department of Transportation. Hall and McPherson both won Kathryn J.R. Swanson Public Service awards.

GHSA also presented Peter K. O'Rourke Special Achievement awards to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office in the state of Washington, the Teen Driver Impact Program in Mississippi, and the "Watch for Me NC" bicycle and pedestrian safety program in North Carolina.

Sponsors of the ceremony included the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility and the National Road Safety Foundation.