Why a Roadway Safety Professional Capacity Building Program?

The mission of the FHWA Office of Safety is to reduce roadway fatalities and serious injuries by making roadways safer. Safety professionals are striving to improve roads, but face challenges as technologies emerge and new professionals enter the field.

The Office of Safety’s Roadway Safety Professional Capacity Building Program (RSPCB) provides resources to help safety experts and specialists develop critical knowledge and skills within the roadway safety workforce.

Challenges Facing the Workforce

There are two key challenges facing the roadway safety workforce:

• Changing Technologies:  Maintaining an effective workforce requires adequate training and education for both new and existing roadway safety professionals. New, advanced hardware technologies, simulation applications and advanced computing, and robust analytical tools—like those found in the Highway Safety Manual—have changed how roadway safety professionals perform their jobs. By providing technical assistance, tools and training, and learning resources, the RSPCB Program and its partners can help agencies fill knowledge gaps and build a skilled roadway safety workforce. This translates into lives saved on roadways.
• Changing Workforce:  The transportation labor force is shrinking due to changes in birth rates, career choices, retirements, and reduced hiring. Supporting the existing workforce and actively recruiting new employees who are able to navigate the multidisciplinary approach to delivering safe roadways will help meet future labor needs.

The RSPCB Program is responding to these challenges by providing resources to facilitate the deployment of roadway safety tools and skills in the field. The objectives of the program are to:

• Provide educational resources to Federal, State, and local roadway safety practitioners at all ability levels.
• Offer flexible but comprehensive technical assistance to help public-sector practitioners overcome safety challenges, develop new skills, and implement effective safety practices.
• Identify and bridge gaps in the knowledge base of the public-sector roadway safety workforce.
• Assist with safety strategic planning to address State and National safety.

Program Resources

The RSPCB Program offers a range of roadway safety resources, all available on this website:

• Information about training and education delivered by Federal and private partners.
• Technical assistance through the Roadway Safety Peer-to-Peer Program, a comprehensive program that includes:
  • Referrals to experienced peers or technical experts for phone or email support
  • Onsite technical assistance
  • Training workshops
  • Facilitated peer exchanges
• The Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) community of practice where roadway safety professionals discuss safety issues, share effective practices, and collaborate to solve problems.
• Roadway Safety Noteworthy Practices database that catalogs successful and unique approaches that save time, money, and other critical resources, while effectively helping to reduce roadway fatalities and injuries.
• The road safety course finder that contains a list of over 50 courses, mostly in civil engineering programs, where roadway safety is the primary focus of the course discussion and learning objectives.
• Dashboards that display data across a number of different crash categories.

Program Partners

Several program partners offer training on roadway safety topics. View training.