AASHTO Journal - AASHTO Board of Directors Passes Safety Resolution

Building on the momentum of its first ever Safety Summit – held mid-October in Kansas City, MO – the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Board of Directors unanimously passed a resolution during its 2023 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis that furthers the organization’s commitment to combatting roadway fatalities through collective concrete actions.

[Above photo by AASHTO]

“While AASHTO and its members have always considered safety to be the top priority in the work we do, it is clear that the number of fatalities and serious injuries on our nation’s roadways represent a completely unacceptable public health crisis, and there is more we must do collectively to reverse this terrible trend,” noted Roger Millar, secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation and AASHTO president, in a statement.

“The Safety Summit was a major step for us, coming together with federal, state, local, and private partners to finding ways to more deliberately weave safety considerations into every stage of the transportation lifecycle,” he added.

“This resolution acknowledges that state departments of transportation play a major role in ensuring mobility and safety for all road users, and it highlights our support for safe system approaches and the creation of a safety action plan to make real progress in saving lives,” Millar said.

The resolution – entitled “State DOTs’ Commitment to Address the National Roadway Safety Crisis” – resolves that:

The AASHTO Board of Directors “resolutely and firmly” renews its commitment to connecting places and communities with a transportation system free of fatalities and serious injuries;
AASHTO supports safe system approaches to incorporate safe roads, safe road users, safe speeds, safe vehicles, and post-crash care into decisions that acknowledge deaths and serious injuries are unacceptable, recognize humans make mistakes, account for human vulnerabilities, share responsibility with everyone involved in improving traffic safety, apply redundancy as a crucial element of improving system safety, and contribute to comprehensive data-informed solutions for preventing and mitigating deaths and serious injury crashes;
AASHTO commits to develop a Safety Action Plan focused on sharing among states notable and innovative tools, best practices, policies, and other resources for incorporating safety into program, project, and data-driven decisions that are coordinated and consistently carried out throughout the project lifecycle—including work zones and maintenance and operations – and on developing additional resources to address gaps and needs; and
The Safety Action Plan will be implemented by leveraging AASHTO’s councils and committees – in collaboration with key partners including federal and local governments – to support every state DOT and inform AASHTO recommendations for surface transportation authorization by harnessing the “whole of AASHTO.”