Ralph Wildy Zimmer, a Montana State University transportation professor with a focus on safety who helped both Montana and Minnesota’s state transportation departments identify high crash locations through improved traffic records systems, has died. He was 83.
Zimmer, Ph.D., F.ASCE, joined Montana State’s civil engineering department in 1972. In the mid-1980s he rose to assistant to the dean. Congenital macular degeneration forced an early retirement in 1998 as associate professor emeritus and senior research engineer.
Zimmer was active in multiple committees across the region during his career, routinely serving on over 30 at a time and chairing many. For four decades, he was chair of Bozeman, Montana’s pedestrian and traffic safety committee and as a member of the Bozeman transportation coordinating committee.
He was licensed in the District of Columbia, Indiana, and Montana, and was titled in California as a traffic engineer. At Purdue University in Indiana, Zimmer earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in civil engineering, with his graduate focus on transportation. He authored Consequences of Certain Data Errors in the Transportation Planning Process in 1972.
Zimmer was a life member of ASCE, having joined in 1964. He was a past president of the Montana Society of Engineers and the Intermountain Section of Transportation Engineers. He also was a fellow in the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and a fellow emeritus in the Association of Transportation Safety Information Professionals.
Parliamentary procedure and photography were among Zimmer’s hobbies, with photos published in national periodicals.
