Third Senior Executive Transportation and Public Safety Summit: Final Report

4. "Zero" Safety Initiatives and Traffic Incident Management

Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Associate Administrator for Safety Cheryl Walker moderated the "Zero" Safety Initiatives and Traffic Incident Management (TIM) session and brought to the forefront how national and international initiatives with a vision for zero fatalities benefit from and integrate with TIM. Three efforts—Vision Zero, Towards Zero Deaths, and Road to Safety—target advances in safety through engineering, enforcement, education, and emergency services to keep responders, drivers, and pedestrians safe across freeway, arterial, and multimodal travel.

Jeff Lindley, the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Associate Executive Director and former FHwA Associate Administrator, spoke about the launch of the ITE Vision Zero Task Force in 2016 to complement the work of the international Vision Zero Network, and how it focused more directly on large and medium-sized cities. He also shared subsequent efforts of the Road to Zero Coalition related to the Safe Systems approach, which anticipates and plans for human error while accommodating human injury tolerances in design and operations.

Deputy Director of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) Everett Lott offered practical applications for Vision Zero within the Washington, DC region. The District is a multimodal city with fewer than 15 miles of freeway, with 38 percent transit and 12 percent walking trips, and with two-thirds of auto trips from out of State during peak periods. Mr. Lott noted four thematic priorities for the District within the Vision Zero—creating safe streets, protecting vulnerable users, preventing dangerous driving, and being transparent and responsive. He highlighted seven TIM efforts that reflect these thematic priorities, including efforts such as improving consistency of TIM laws and policies, coordinating a regional annual TIM self-assessment, and launching outreach initiatives that better engage the public and officials on TIM. While DDOT was the last after the 50 States to enact a Move Over law; their law includes regulatory elements that introduce broad speed limit changes, implement moving violations, and address commercial vehicle travel.

In the U.S., the Vision Zero Network member cities, including DC, are taking steps such as reducing speed limits, making travelers aware of slow down/move over laws, and changing infrastructure design to protect vulnerable users. Cities also are committing to gather, analyze, use, and share reliable data to understand traffic safety.

Mike Tooley, Director of Montana Department of Transportation and Chair of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHTO) Committee on Safety, shared facets of AASHTO's Towards Zero Deaths National Strategy on Highway Safety. The National Strategy focuses on proven countermeasures and improving traffic safety culture. Strategies go beyond public information campaigns, recognizing that every transportation decision should consider safety. The Towards Zero Deaths strategy includes infrastructure, drivers and passengers, vulnerable road users, vehicles, and safety management decisions. TIM elements focus on incident detection, quick clearance, and secondary crash avoidance. Mr. Tooley shared a Towards Zero Deaths two-minute video accessible on the TowardsZeroDeaths site, which addresses maintaining active incident management as a critical element to reaching the zero deaths goal.

National Safety Council (NSC) Senior Director for Government Affairs Jane Terry shared their mission to eliminate preventable deaths at work, in the home, and on our roads. She spoke about NSC's Road to Zero Coalition initiatives to emphasize what works, accelerate technology in vehicles and infrastructure, and prioritize safe systems and a culture of safety. She shared some lesser known statistics, such as the fact that 71 percent of drivers have at some time taken a photo or video as they pass by emergency responders with lights flashing, and that 16 percent of drivers report nearly striking a first responder or emergency vehicle on the side of the road while driving. She cited surveys that indicated that 33 percent of drivers had not heard of "Move Over" laws. She also shared graphics from the Seattle Department of Transportation that noted that 9 out of 10 pedestrians survive when hit by a vehicle traveling 20 miles per hour, but only one out of 10 pedestrians survive when hit by a vehicle traveling 40 miles per hour.¹

Participants and presenters also briefly discussed how to make TIM a more visible part of safety initiatives and how to advance the "zero" efforts through the practice of TIM.