Members of the Mid America Association of State Transportation Officials or MAASTO signed a Safety Technology Resolution during the group’s annual meeting in Minneapolis this week; a resolution that seeks to improve highway safety across the region.
[Above photo by MAASTO]
The resolution focuses on three specific areas of highway safety: work zones, commercial motor vehicles or CMVs, and traffic management.
Scott Marler – director of the Iowa Department of Transportation and then-president of MAASTO – stressed at the signing that state departments of transportation across the country, along with every other state and local transportation agency, are committed to improving transportation system safety; and a variety of new technologies represent “vital tools in our toolboxes” for doing so.

“Given the harsh realities on our nation’s roads, we need to actively develop, test, and deploy these technologies for all users as quickly and safely as we can,” explained Marler, who also serves as the chair of the Committee on Transportation System Operations or CTSO for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
“Numerous challenges remain to achieve that goal, but they are ones that we can overcome as an industry if we all work together,” he emphasized.
To address those challenges, the resolution calls on MAASTO members to collaborate on several specific technology tasks, including:
- Adopt and share information across the region through the use of the Work Zone Data Exchange system in order to provide real-time information about transportation work zones.
- Provide real-time information to travelers approaching work zones about the potential for slowed or stopped traffic in the work zone through the use of dynamic queue detection.
- Utilize technological methods to aid in the control of traffic in work zones, such as Automated Flagger Assistance Devices.
- Provide real-time traffic information to CMV operators via in-cab notifications to help prevent crashes as well as keep commerce moving efficiently throughout the Midwest.
- Evaluate and install technology assisted measures within CMV weigh stations to identify potential critical safety needs before crashes occur, such as tire pressure monitors, brake heat sensors, and weigh-in-motion assistance for inspection staff.
- Evaluate and install preventive measures to reduce the incidence and severity of wrong-way crashes on interstates, parkways, and tollways.
- Use existing roadway-based camera infrastructure to identify opportunities to improve safety in real time as well as help minimize response times to critical incidents.
- Support the activities of the MAASTO connected and automated vehicle or CAV committee to implement safety forward technology applications in the connected and automated vehicle spaces.
To read MAASTO’s safety resolution in its entirety, click here.

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