Browsing by Subject "Traffic fatalities"
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Item Evaluating the Effectiveness of State Toward Zero Deaths Programs(Center for Excellence in Rural Safety, 2012-11) Munnich, Lee W. Jr.; Douma, Frank; Qin, Xiao; Thorpe, J. David; Wang, KaiSince 2001 approximately 30 U.S. states have adopted programs to reduce traffic fatalities to zero with names such as Vision Zero, Target Zero, or Toward Zero Deaths (TZD). TZD is now being promoted as a national strategy by a coalition of transportation and safety groups. Successful TZD programs have five characteristics: 1) an ambitious goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries; 2) high levels of inter-agency cooperation in pursuit of the TZD goal among state departments of transportation, public safety, health, and other relevant agencies; 3) a comprehensive strategy addressing all 4 E’s – engineering, enforcement, education, and EMS elements of traffic safety; 4) a performance-based, data-driven system of targeting resources and strategies where they will have the greatest impact in reducing traffic fatalities; and 5) policy leadership from relevant entities, including the Governor, the state legislature, and the heads of state agencies. While many of the state TZD programs are relatively new and emerging, four state programs have been around long enough to have enough years of crash data to evaluate the impacts of the programs – Minnesota, Idaho, Utah and Washington. Statistical tests on these four programs support the conclusion that implementing TZD programs accelerates the reduction of fatality rates. The acceleration rate varies from state to state, taking time for a new program to gain its full effect. Although each state has different degrees of temporal effect of its TZD program, the average effect is more and more apparent over time.Item United States fatal pedestrian crash hot spot locations and characteristics(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2021) Schneider, Robert J.; Sanders, Rebecca L.; Proulx, Frank R.; Moayyed, HamidehUS pedestrian fatalities are at their highest level in nearly three decades and account for an increasing share of total traffic fatalities (16%). To achieve the vision of a future transportation system that produces zero deaths, pedestrian safety must be improved. In this study, we screened the entire US roadway network to identify fatal pedestrian crash “hot spot” corridors: 1,000-meter-long sections of roadway where six or more fatal pedestrian crashes occurred during an eightyear period. We identified 34 hot spot corridors during 2001-2008 and 31 during 2009-2016. While only five corridors were hot spots during both analysis periods, the 60 unique hot spots had remarkably consistent characteristics. Nearly all (97%) were multilane roadways, with 70% requiring pedestrians to cross five or more lanes. More than three-quarters had speed limits of 30 mph or higher, and 62% had traffic volumes exceeding 25,000 vehicles per day. All had adjacent commercial retail and service land uses, 72% had billboards, and three-quarters were bordered by low-income neighborhoods. Corridors with these characteristics clearly have the potential to produce high numbers of pedestrian fatalities. We also used hierarchical clustering to classify the hot spots based on their roadway and surrounding landuse characteristics into three types: regional highways, urban primary arterial roadways, and New York City thoroughfares. Each context may require different safety strategies. Our results support a systemic approach to improve pedestrian safety: Agencies should identify other roadway corridors with similar characteristics throughout the US and take actions to reduce the risk of future pedestrian fatalities.