AASHTO Journal - Video: Translating Roadway Safety Ideas into Practice

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has released video of a knowledge session held during its 2024 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia entitled, “The Real ‘How-to’ on Translating Roadway Safety Ideas into Practice.”

[Above image by AASHTO]

Moderated by Jon Markt, senior traffic and transportation planner for engineering firm HDR, the session featured Nancy Daubenberger, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Transportation; Jared Perdue, secretary of the Florida Department of Transportation; Tony Tavares, director of the California Department of Transportation or Caltrans; and Shanté Hastings, now secretary for the Delaware Department of Transportation.

That knowledge session delved into a variety of safety countermeasures, methods, and policy approaches that can help “bend the curve” on traffic fatalities and injuries.

“Everybody has places they need to go to,” explained Minnesota DOT’s Daubenberger. “So we’re talking about all users about how we improve safety on every project. As part of that, we continue to implement our performance-based practical design to optimize the benefits of our [transportation] investments – including and especially their safety benefits. And then, of course, we have our ‘Complete Streets’ principles and practices which are part of that update to the design manual.”

“Safety has always been our priority for decades. We had multiple programs, divisions, and districts working on very good safety projects, but there really wasn’t a coordinated effort across the department,” Caltrans’ Tavares added.

“So in 2020, we put together a strategic plan on how we would address safety more holistically and have a more focused approach. We established our first chief safety officer [position] in the department and that position pulled in all the different programs and divisions to really focus our efforts on safety,” he said. “We put together a director’s policy on safety, and we implemented the safe systems approach as well. And with that ‘Safe Systems’ approach, we’ve been able to develop our road safety action plan for the entire department.”

As part of a broader effort to encourage safety innovations to help reduce fatalities and injuries, Florida DOT’s Perdue explained that his agency embarked on an unusual “Shark Tank” style approach.

“A lot of times in government, we have the potential to stifle innovation and ideas because of regulations and rules and all that,” he explained. “So one way we are trying to spark or incentivize innovation is we actually started up a ‘Shark Tank’ style technology event. We focused it directly on [highway] work zones, and we invited innovators to come in. They had a panel of judges to present an idea of how they think they could improve safety in a work zone, with the commitment from our agency to find them a path to quickly pilot their idea.”

Delaware DOT’s Hastings said one way her agency is trying to instill more positive traffic behaviors is to engage more children in traffic safety outreach efforts.

“An idea we stole from the Georgia Department of Transportation is their K through 12 curriculum and we are disseminating it to kids of all ages because we’ve got to change the behaviors, to Jared’s point,” she said. “Because really we need to just start changing the behaviors and the thought process around safety, and it starts at all ages, really.”