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In 2017 and 2018, San Francisco saw historic lows in traffic-related deaths on its streets. However, every year in San Francisco, approximately 30 people lose their lives and more than 500 are severely injured while traveling on city streets. San Francisco has resolved that even one death is unacceptable, and is committed to stopping further loss of life.
Walking and biking are two modes of travel that have rapidly gained in popularity in New York City (NYC)—in fact, NYC has seen bicycling activity quadruple over the last decade. Contributing to this rise is the “Citi Bike” program, NYC’s bikeshare system, which accounted for nearly 14 million bicycle trips in 2016. However, non-motorized transportation modes are not without risk. In 2013, the city experienced 178 pedestrian fatalities and 134 bicyclist fatalities. The following year, NYC adopted Vision Zero.
In many States, the district office maintenance divisions serve as the most visible part of the Department of Transportation (DOT). They live on the front line, responding to emergencies day and night, and keeping the traveling public safe in every kind of weather and calamity. They generally possess detailed knowledge of every section of the district's roads, including current problem areas and those likely to be problematic in the future.
Some State DOTs find innovative ways to tap into the extensive knowledge of their maintenance staff. In Arkansas, the DOT uses maintenance crews to analyze crash sites and recommend next steps for addressing related safety issues. These on-site reviews help confirm the previous analysis, identify any additional conditions that may have contributed to the crash, and start the process of identifying possible countermeasures.
Agencies typically conduct site assessments at the time of day when the safety issues were reported, and the around-the-clock availability of maintenance services lends itself to this kind of flexibility and responsiveness. Information collected during the assessment includes roadway geometry, lane/shoulder width, access, sight distance, operations, traffic, existing traffic control devices, etc. Involving additional safety partners during the on-site review when possible can also be beneficial and is encouraged.
Maintenance crews often act as the eyes and ears of the DOT, and may be the first to recognize areas where safety issues need to be addressed. In Arizona, safety offices leverage this knowledge by reviewing current maintenance records to identify potential problems before crash data triggers an action. Maintenance records have become a channel for quickly sharing safety related information.
Specifically, each Arizona DOT Engineering District monitors and records repeat maintenance issues, which can indicate the location of potential safety concerns. For example, records indicating that a specific light pole is continually in need of repair due to repeated vehicle impacts might point to a problem with the pole's location. In this way, maintenance data helps identify specific problem areas.
District maintenance crews often have a unique knowledge of and dedication to the safety of the system under their care. They also possess a proficiency in the identification of safety related issues, and maintain detailed records. By drawing on those assets, Departments of Transportation increase the readily available resources to identify and address safety issues.
Jesse Gutierrez
Arizona DOT State Engineers Office
1615 W. Jackson St.
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
(602) 712-8274
JGutierrez@azdot.gov
There are numerous strategies and infrastructure improvements that can reduce crash fatalities and serious injuries. But to have a real impact on crash rates, it also takes strong communication between law enforcement, who see firsthand the consequences of severe crashes, and engineers, who know the science behind efforts to reduce the worst crashes.
In Maryland, as in many States, there is often turnover in leadership of Statewide traffic police units, making it difficult to establish lasting connections between law enforcement and highway planners. That's why nearly a decade ago the Maryland Highway Safety Office (MHSO) developed a comprehensive training program for traffic commanders that melds police work with concepts such as strategic planning and data-driven decision making that are more often the purview of engineers.
Maryland's traffic commander leadership program is called the Leading Effective Traffic Enforcement Program (LETEP). Since LETEP was founded in 2008, there have been nearly one dozen classes with up to 25 traffic police commanders in each, including commanders from outside Maryland.
The program has been refined with insights from past students, experts outside the law enforcement community, and curriculum consultants. The LETEP approach is unique because it trains traffic police leaders on the importance of roadway design and safety concepts, so that officers in the field play a key role in identifying and reporting roadway safety needs, such as dangerous intersection or curves.
Traffic officers are trained in basic engineering concepts and effectively become another set of eyes to inform infrastructure improvements and crash reduction strategies. LETEP also trains officers and leadership how to think beyond the traffic ticket: the core of the curriculum is about encouraging law enforcement to go beyond traditional police work and ask why; to consider how and if their work is having an impact on reducing serious crashes.
Maryland is also unique in that representatives from law enforcement lead several of its State Highway Strategic Plan (SHSP) emphasis areas. Of the state's six emphasis areas, four are behavioral (aggressive driving, distracted driving, impaired driving, occupant protection) and two are engineering related (highway infrastructure, pedestrian crashes), demonstrating the range of safety areas and strategy-making where law enforcement is involved.
The LETEP curriculum is mature and is a proven, effective way to mesh the goals of law enforcement leadership and traffic engineers. But, the real-life responsibilities of traffic divisions can differ greatly. A traffic division in a city, for instance, may be constantly working to make sure that events such as fairs, races, and baseball games are safe. They may be so pressed to maintain safe movement within their city that they do not have the bandwidth to proactively link their daily work with long- and short-term engineering solutions that can improve traffic safety.
While the results of the LETEP program can depend greatly on size, perspective, and agenda of specific law enforcement agencies, MHSO staff have developed personal relationships with every senior law enforcement executive in Maryland. Open channels from traffic planners to traffic enforcement leadership can help develop solutions for traffic divisions that find it difficult to implement LETEP insights.
Tom Gianni
Chief
Maryland Highway Safety Office
410-787-4014
TGianni@mva.maryland.gov
On July 1, 2015, New Hampshire joined a growing number of States that have enacted laws banning hand-held electronic device use while driving. A previous law in New Hampshire banned texting while driving, but it was difficult to enforce. Drivers often texted while keeping their phones out of view of law officers—if they were pulled over, they would argue that they were making a phone call, which had been legal.
State police leadership and the State Attorney General's office pushed strongly for and helped write New Hampshire's hands-free law. To educate the public on the new law and the potentially fatal consequences of distracted driving, New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) has pursued a comprehensive regional marketing campaign—branded as Hands-Free New Hampshire—across radio, television, social media, and web platforms.
Hands-Free New Hampshire is part of a broader road safety effort in New Hampshire called Driving Toward Zero. That effort aligns with the Federal Highway Administration’s Toward Zero Deaths strategy, and promotes a safety culture where the only acceptable number of yearly road fatalities is zero.
Driving Toward Zero programs emerge from collaboration with more than a dozen public and private organizations, including the American Automobile Association (AAA), the Bike-Walk Alliance of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission, and the New Hampshire Automobile Dealers Association (NHADA).
Through these alliances, information about hands-free driving is spreading beyond NHDOT's direct efforts. Posters and brochures have been posted and distributed on the web and at physical locations of NHADA, the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and numerous town police headquarters.
Communications consultants work with NHDOT to advance the hands-free campaign and to create promotional materials, including two television public service announcements that run on local cable networks. Across the landscape of State road safety efforts New Hampshire is particularly proactive in working with consultants to promote safe driving practices. NHDOT uses Highway Safety Improvement Program funds to pay for the expertise and media contacts that communications consultants provide.
Because less-experienced, younger drivers are nearly three times more likely1 as more experienced drivers to have a fatal crash, NHDOT has focused specific efforts to reduce distracted driving among teens. Driver education instructors incorporate distracted driving lessons and information about New Hampshire's hands-free law into their curricula. A safe driving pledge card serves as a conversation starter to engage young people in thinking about their choices behind the wheel.
At conferences held twice per year, driving instructors, school administrators, and NHDOT staff discuss new initiatives to combat distracted driving. NHDOT provides instructors with the latest posters, flyers, and videos to share with their students. The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is also part of the Driving Toward Zero coalition. Drivers at UNH who are slightly older, but perhaps still inexperienced, are exposed to the same life-saving information as teens. As new students from out of State come to the school over upcoming fall semesters, NHDOT staff will continue their education efforts, particularly because some students come from States that have more lax laws on electronic device use while driving.
New Hampshire's hands-free marketing campaign was implemented to tackle the challenge of helping the public associate Driving Toward Zero with safety-specific programs or legislation. The combination of technical expertise from NHDOT staff and marketing expertise from communications consultants has largely achieved that goal.
The hands-free law was initially met with resistance on social media. NHDOT staff also experienced pushback at safety fairs, auto races, and hockey and football games across the State where they were presenting information on the new hands-free law. Through persistence and patience, those voices have diminished and, anecdotally, NHDOT staff hear from the public that they support the hands-free law.
NHDOT staff anticipates feedback from the State police on whether the hands-free law is enforceable. They will also analyze statistics for the second half of this year and hope to see a drop in serious injuries and fatalities.
1 OSHA URL no longer available.
James A. Marshall
Administrator
Highway Design
New Hampshire Department of Transportation
603-271-2171
JAMarshall@dot.state.nh.us
The Ohio Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Center produces its Roadside Safety Field Guide as a quick reference for Ohio's Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Local Public Agency construction and maintenance staff and contractors working in the field on road safety infrastructure.
While the field guide is handy and useful out in the field, it is costly to print and update. To make the guide more accessible and less expensive to produce, Ohio LTAP developed a mobile application for construction and maintenance staff to access the guide via existing handheld electronic devices, such as their smart phones.
The Roadside Safety Field Guide app summarizes guidelines established in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Roadside Design Guide for installing and maintaining roadside safety hardware. This mobile job aid includes basic principles, descriptions and images of roadside safety hardware, design considerations, and maintenance information.
Ohio transportation agencies at all levels can use the application for all aspects of safety infrastructure maintenance and construction. For instance, if a guardrail is damaged, crews sent to install a new guardrail can refer to guidelines detailed in the app. Staff at the FHWA division office also use the app during inspections and site reviews. Push notifications automatically notify users about updates to the guide and make it easy for users to download the newest version.
The content for the application—the safety guide itself—was already established. That gave Ohio LTAP a leg up and allowed its developer to start with user-interface considerations. Ohio LTAP staff and the developer worked on creating a document structure that made sense for a mobile app, to make it intuitive for users to navigate from main menus to submenus and quickly find needed information.
While the coding work for the app was fairly simple, finding someone who could do the coding came down to innovative hiring. The LTAP center decided to hire a college intern with coding experience to create the app. Ohio LTAP decided to move forward with the intern as the developer instead of finding a more costly outside firm to create and update the app. Ohio LTAP has found in conversations with other LTAP and ODOT programs interested in developing their own field guide applications that finding cost-effective app development is an ongoing challenge. That is why the Ohio LTAP Center decided to seek out a college intern with the right background and then provide the intern a resume-enhancing opportunity to create the mobile app. This model worked well for Ohio LTAP and they plan to continue it as future apps are developed.
Feedback has been universally positive—Ohio LTAP has not received any requests to bring back the printed guidebooks. Staff in the field have real-time information at their fingertips to make the right decisions to positively impact the safety of the traveling public.
Ohio LTAP and ODOT have seen the following benefits from developing its field guide mobile application:
Because the roadside safety guide application makes updating the guide faster and cheaper than printing new hard copies, Ohio LTAP is pursuing several other new mobile applications as well. Next up is a sign installation app with guidelines for typical sign installations on local roads. Then there will be a safety countermeasures app, so staff in the field who encounter a possible roadway safety issue or are conducting a Road Safety Audit will be able to access and review potential countermeasures on their phones.
Ohio LTAP is also developing small marketing cards with quick-read (QR) codes to pass out at conferences and other events to guide potential users to the app download sites. Finally, Ohio LTAP recently purchased 40 tablets to offer an electronic version of the guide during trainings—in the long run, it is expected the tablets will dramatically reduce the cost of printing guides for use in the classroom setting.
Victoria Beale
Ohio LTAP Center Director
Ohio Department of Transportation
614-466-3129
Victoria.Beale@dot.ohio.gov
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) established a Local Roads Safety Program in 2006 and despite early barriers and challenges, it has become a viable program aimed at improving highway safety on Louisiana's local road network. Today, the Louisiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Center administers the Local Road Safety Program and DOTD sets aside $3 to $5 million from its Section 154 and 164 Safety Transfer funds, Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds, and High Risk Rural Roads Program (HRRRP) funds for local safety projects. (Note: MAP-21 continues two penalty transfer programs to encourage States to enact Open Container laws (Section 154) and Repeat Intoxicated Driver laws (Section 164). Any State that does not enact and enforce a conforming open container and repeat intoxicated driver law will be subject to a penalty transfer of funds. Additional information is available on the MAP-21 Guidance page.) Thanks to the successful partnership between LTAP and DOTD, technical assistance and funding is available to help local agencies implement infrastructure projects.
Within DOTD, no unit or department is responsible for administering local road safety projects, which is one of the main reasons for the partnership with LTAP. The DOTD Office of Safety provides funding to LA LTAP for a full-time traffic safety engineer/program manager, a part-time project engineer and two part-time traffic safety engineers.
The main component of the Louisiana LTAP program is to help local agencies develop the capability to solve local road safety problems using local resources or by accessing funds through the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) process. LTAP assists local agencies to identify, apply for, and administer local road infrastructure safety projects. Most recently, they have begun to assist the regional transportation safety coalitions with the identification and implementation of infrastructure improvements.
In 2011, DOTD divided the State into 10 regions and charged each with developing a regional safety coalition and a safety plan (a regional SHSP) to help with the implementation of the Louisiana SHSP. Each coalition reviews regional crash data to identify strategies and projects to reduce fatalities and serious injuries for impaired drivers, unbelted drivers, young drivers, and infrastructure-related crashes. LTAP works with the coalitions to identify and implement local infrastructure improvements for the plans in coordination with activities on the State system.
To date, LTAP has provided local data, data analysis, and technical assistance to four regional coalitions. The most advanced coalition, the South Central Regional Transportation Safety Partnership, has conducted five Road Safety Audits (RSAs), and with the help of LTAP is preparing to apply for funding. LTAP also currently is working with coalition members (as well as individual parishes) to implement a system-wide/systemic approach to improving safety on horizontal curves. LTAP has located all horizontal curves on the local road system. LTAP is working with the local agencies and DOTD to develop a process to characterize and prioritize these curves based on certain criteria and to develop a manageable process to implement projects systemically.
In terms of next steps, LTAP, LSU, and DOTD are partnering on a three-year program to assemble roadway and traffic data on the local road system. This program will collect roadway characteristic and traffic data on all arterials, collectors and roads of significance for the local road system. This will continue to enhance LTAP's capability to work with the local agencies, share data, and collaborate on infrastructure improvements. LTAP is facilitating the development of a research project to develop better estimates of local road Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) which is necessary for many of the analytical tools currently being used to analyze for safety.
The Ohio Local Road Safety Program is a three-part collaboration among Ohio DOT (ODOT), the Ohio Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) center, and the County Engineers Association of Ohio (CEAO). The collaboration provides funding for local road safety improvements, offers training and technical assistance to local agencies, and assists with the administration of local safety projects.
ODOT dedicates $12 million of Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds annually to qualifying safety projects on county roads. The funds are administered by CEAO. ODOT also funds a position at CEAO to administer the county safety projects and provide technical assistance to counties as they develop and implement local safety projects. Once projects are approved for safety funding, they are administered by ODOT through the district offices or by local governments through the Office of Local Programs. The funding set aside specifically for county roads has enabled county engineers to take the lead in determining the improvement projects to fund. Providing funding for a CEAO position enables counties to administer projects with the assistance of the CEAO Program Manager.
Local agencies also are eligible to apply for HSIP funds through the statewide program managed by ODOT. Multidisciplinary committees review applications each year and award funds based on scored criteria and other factors, such as cost, compatibility between countermeasures and crash patterns, and relevance to the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). ODOT provides crash data and user-friendly tools to help local governments analyze safety challenges and justify public investments.
Ohio LTAP has developed educational, outreach, and Road Safety Audit (RSA) programs designed to build safety knowledge at the local level. Participation in RSA programs and training has increased now that an incentive is tied to local agency RSA participation. Typically ODOT will fund low-cost safety improvements on corridors or at spot locations where RSAs are conducted; however, if an RSA identifies the need for larger, more costly improvements, ODOT sends task order consultants to assess the problem and the costs.
ODOT's partnerships with LTAP and CEAO have successfully made safety a local priority. With over 2,300 local agencies in Ohio, about 75 percent of these governments have taken advantage of the training, technical assistance, and tools provided by ODOT, Ohio LTAP, and CEAO.
Fifty percent of California's Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds are dedicated to local roads. The approximately $100 million-per-year program is managed by the Caltrans Division of Local Assistance (DLA), which is responsible for programming the funds to local road safety projects. As a part of the process, DLA sets criteria for HSIP project applications, reviews applications for accuracy, and selects projects. The division does not identify the projects for the local jurisdictions or administer the projects once selected, but instead provides guidance, tools, and training so the local jurisdictions are empowered to make informed decisions on effective safety improvements.
When the HSIP program first started, the application process was very basic, but has evolved into a data-driven process. To improve Caltrans's overall data-driven approach to statewide safety project selection and to maximize the long-term safety improvements across California, DLA developed Local Roadway Safety: A Manual for California’s Local Road Owners. The manual provides an easy-to-use, straightforward, comprehensive framework of the steps and analysis tools local jurisdictions would need to proactively identify locations with roadway safety issues and the appropriate countermeasures.
Developing this resource has improved local agencies' ability to perform benefit/cost calculations for project applications. Two-and-a-half years ago, the average benefit/cost ratio on a project was approximately 8, but currently it is approximately 13.5. Local agencies are submitting applications for projects with greater lifesaving benefits. Local agencies understand the necessity of the data-driven process. The division also has seen an increase in positive communication with local agencies.
The Safe Roads Alliance worked with State department of motor vehicles (DMV) staff from around the country, highway safety researchers, academics, behavioral scientists, educators and parents and teens to develop the “best-practices” based Parent's Supervised Driving Program (PSDP). PSDP reaches out to parents of teen drivers at a critical time in the teen learning process. Currently available in 13 States, PSDP is provided to DMVs at no cost in an effort to make the most of the supervised driving period that is generally required as part of graduated driver licensing (GDL). The program includes step-by-step instructions for parents on how and what to teach their teen during the supervised driving process, including practicing in a variety of conditions and focusing on “higher order” driving skills.
Improved support and education for the parents of student drivers.
Jeff Larson
Safe Roads Alliance
617-429-9601
jeff@saferoadsalliance.org