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Safety

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Implement Complete Streets Improvements

Complete Streets implementation aligns with the Safe System Approach (SSA), which anticipates human mistakes by designing and managing road infrastructure to keep the risk of a mistake low and to reduce injury severity if a crash does occur. FHWA promotes and advances infrastructure solutions to prevent common crash types (1) involving pedestrians and bicyclists, (2) at intersections, and (3) with vehicles departing the roadway. In all cases, reducing speed can help reduce crash severity.

Plan and Analyze Complete Streets

Transportation professionals in States, MPOs, and localities conduct analyses and produce plans to make short-term improvements and set long-term goals for the surface transportation network. These plans are inter-disciplinary and may explore the transportation, safety, land use, environmental, economic, housing, employment, health, and other factors of a roadway’s structure and the function it serves for a community. Under a Complete Streets design model, safety for all users will be incorporated into all these transportation planning and analysis processes.

Make Complete Streets the Default Approach

A key way to encourage consistent prioritization of the safety of all users is to make funding and designing Complete Streets the easiest option when designing streets;1 If safety for all users can be incorporated into definitions, guidance, grant awards, and review processes, it would be easier for agencies to take action. A full transition to a Complete Streets design model requires leadership; identification and elimination of barriers; and development of new policies, rules, and procedures to prioritize safety.