Safety Culture Evolves as Industry Strives to Reduce Crashes
June 07, 2011
Safety has long been an important component of transportation system design and engineering, but it has been historically addressed in a reactive manner where a facility was evaluated after a problem was identified. Moreover, few ways existed to quantitatively measure safety impacts in a comprehensive way, and professionals often relied on design standards, capacity, or reduced speed as surrogates for safety.
An emerging safety culture within the industry is changing that mindset. Increasingly, a growing number of cities, counties, states and other jurisdictions across the nation are taking a more proactive approach through safety conscious planning and using tools to quantify the safety attributes of design features and elements.
Safety conscious planning has been an evolutionary process, rooted in the concept of considering the safety not just of drivers but also of pedestrians and other users of the transportation network, said John Milton, chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Highway Safety Performance Committee.
A handful of innovative tools are helping advance this culture of safety. Among them is the first edition of AASHTO’s Highway Safety Manual (HSM). The HSM, which introduces a science-based technical approach that predicts safety, enables transportation professionals to compare countermeasures, and consider the most effective treatments. The HSM comes on the heels of the Federal Highway Administration’s Interactive Highway Safety Design Module (IHSDM), which was one of the pioneering tools in evaluating roadway safety.
Planners and engineers here are often focused on pedestrian safety, so treatments tend to include mid-block crosswalks on roadways and installing medians to provide refuge for pedestrians who are crossing these busy roadways, said Mario Candia-Martinez, P.E., an engineer in Kittelson & Associates, Inc.’s (KAI) Fort Lauderdale office, Mario added that moving bus stops closer to intersections and lowering speed limits also are proving to be effective.
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) such as electronic reader boards, as well as rumble strips and roundabouts, are other safety treatments gaining popularity across the country as more jurisdictions embrace a safety culture.
“The growing number of treatment options and documentation on their effectiveness allows practitioners to evaluate which work best as they consider safety improvements,” notes Hermanus Steyn, P.E., an associate engineer in KAI’s Portland office. “We want to be effective and efficient in applying resources,” said Milton, who also serves as director of Enterprise Risk Management at the Washington State Department of Transportation. “The better decisions we make, the more that crashes and the severity of crashes will be reduced. That ultimately is our goal.”
With the HSM as a means of quantifying such comparisons, a solid foundation has been established. The goal now is to build on it through even more comprehensive crash data collection and management. Greater education is also needed so public agencies use the available data and implement policies that foster a safety culture.
Another objective is to ‘demystify’ safety so it becomes more fully integrated into everything from corridor planning to conceptual designs, said Erin Ferguson, an engineering associate in KAI’s Portland office. Safety is sometimes treated as an independent practice area, but I think in general we’re becoming more educated about how it can be incorporated into everything we do.
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