Putting It into Practice
What You Can Do Each Day to Save a Life?
While the nation as a whole struggles to attain a reduction in the traffic fatalities, this report highlights successes of some states that find themselves in the enviable position of not only meeting, but exceeding, their goals.
These examples can assist transportation professionals as they initiate steps to address lane-departure crashes systematically. Many lives can be saved by establishing a short-term goal to develop a program to systematically upgrade safety appurtenances and design features.
Here are some strategies to use in fostering a change:
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Ensure that your Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) is a Living Document—Address safety problems in a comprehensive way, including engineers, law enforcement personnel, educators, judges, and other highway safety specialists in a cooperative effort. Make your support of the SHSP the guiding implementing document, known throughout your agency.
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Develop Action Strategies to Implement Your SHSP and Provide Resources for Safety, Including Staff, Dollars, and Policies—Strongly encourage your staff to adapt or create systemic implementing actions/programs for your SHSP. Many of the strategies described above can assist you in achieving your goals.
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Assign a Multidisciplinary Champion for Safety—Tap someone with enthusiasm for safety and give him/her the authority, time, and resources necessary to lead your program’s implementation. Engineering improvements along with enforcement, education, and emergency medical services have proven to reduce fatalities.
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Conduct Weekly/Monthly Safety Program Meetings with Your Safety Staff/Team—A separate meeting or dedicated time during an established executive staff meeting where you assess your program’s safety progress and reaffirm your safety expectations.
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Share Safety Expectations with Key Management Staff—Share your safety expectations/goals with each member of your executive staff and have them identify what actions they will take in addressing safety. Hold your staff accountable for these actions.
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Establish Safety as a Leadership Performance Measure—Include a safety performance measure in each of your executive staff’s performance reviews. Remember two old management adages: 1) what’s measured gets done; and 2) a perfect plan, absent implementation, yields nothing.
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Provide Safety Program Assistance to Local Governments—Nationally, the overwhelming majority of fatalities and serious injuries occur on local roadways. The strategies described previously will assist local agencies as well as they aid your agency. Direct your agency to develop roadway safety programs that provide training, funding, and/or resources to your locals.
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Fully Utilize All Funding Resources Available for Safety—Use the funding flexibility and obligation authority associated with your state’s safety funding to spend/obligate all of your dollars during the allotted eligibility periods.
“ If you wait until you have consensus in your organization, you'll never begin.”
Kevin Keith, Chief Engineer,
Missouri DOT
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