AASHTO Journal - Agenda Details Released for AASHTO 2024 Safety Summit

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently released key agenda details for its 2024 Safety Summit and Peer Exchange, to be held October 15-17 in Houston. To register for the 2024 Safety Summit, click here.

[Above photo by AASHTO]

The summit brings together state department of transportation leaders, management, and practitioners – as well as transportation and safety professionals in the public, private, non-profit, and academic sectors – to share notable examples of programs, policies, and projects that incorporate safety for all road users throughout the roadway lifecycle and agency activities.

Keynote speakers at the summit will be Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, and David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Highway Data Loss Institute.

The summit will also feature a series addressing key transportation safety factors, including

Integrating Safety into the Roadway Lifecycle and State DOT Culture, co-hosted by the AASHTO Council on Highways and Streets and Federal Highway Administration;
Embedding Safety in Policy, Legislation, and Funding Decisions, co-hosted by the AASHTO Committee on Funding and Finance and National Conference of State Legislatures;
Operations and Post-Crash Care, co-hosted by the AASHTO Committee on Transportation System Operations and National Association of State EMS Officials;
Evolving Safety Practices & Navigating Policy, Liability, and Cultural Change, co-hosted by the AASHTO Committee on Design and American Council of Engineering Companies;
Communications and Engaging Road Users, co-hosted by the AASHTO Committee on Transportation Communications – known as TransComm – and the Governors Highway Safety Association;
Institutionalizing Employee Safety Culture, co-hosted by the AASHTO Agency Administration Managing Committee and North American Association of Transportation Safety and Health Officials.

There will be a workshop at the summit regarding the safety impact of the “Moonshot Project” and how the state DOTs involved in that project can share and benefit from the safety findings of that initiative.

Established in 2021 and approved to move forward by AASHTO in October 2022, the “Moonshot Project” is an effort to draft a “cohesive national transportation vision” for the United States; establishing a national “framework” wherein state DOTs can work “collectively and individually” to develop an over-arching vision for addressing the country’s mobility needs of the future.

It’s also called the “Moonshot Project” because state DOTs involved in the effort seek to harness similar “aspirational energies” like the ones that infused the effort to put a man on the moon.

In addition, there will be a special workshop hosted by AASHTOWare Safety powered by Numetric to illustrate ways AASHTOWare can help state agencies quickly use data to drive changes that improve traffic safety – analyzing roadway and intersection design data along with vehicle crash data to determine which specific countermeasures will be best suited to improve safety from a cost-benefit perspective.

AASHTOWare – which offers a suite of transportation software products delivered through a collaborative business model with state departments of transportation across the country – formed an alliance with Numetric in 2020 to jointly deliver a comprehensive toolset in the traffic safety analytics space built on a “software-as-a-service” or SaaS platform.

The software includes a geographic information system interface, faster calculations, and tools such as Google Street View, which provides the capability to view an individual site.

The product’s SaaS platform also allows agency personnel to access it without having to download software onto their computers, allowing for far wider usage across any licensing organization.