Proven Safety Countermeasures in Rural Communities

Details

• Corporate Creators:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Countermeasures Highway Safety Rural Highways Traffic Safety
• Publication/ Report Number:
  FHWA-SA-24-005
• Resource Type:
  Brief
• Right Statement:
  Public Domain
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration
• Abstract:
  From 2017 to 2021, over 83,000 people died on rural roadways; this accounts for 43 percent of all roadway deaths despite only 20 percent of the U.S. population residing in these areas and only 31 percent of vehicle miles traveled occurring in rural areas. Furthermore, 43 percent of speed- related fatalities, 56 percent of roadway departure fatalities (i.e., a crash that occurs after a vehicle crosses an edge line or center line or otherwise leaves the traveled way), and 26 percent of all intersection fatalities occurred in rural areas. Across the same time period, over 6,400 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed on rural roadways. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has identified 28 Proven Safety Countermeasures (PSCs) to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes on roads nationwide (see figure 1). These PSCs are applicable for a range of contexts, road types, and governing agencies across the country. The PSCs can offer significant and measurable impacts across an agency’s rural road network as part of their approach to improving safety. The PSCs can support agencies with implementation of the Safe System Approach, which seeks to build and reinforce multiple layers of protection to both prevent crashes from happening and minimize the harm caused to those involved when crashes do occur. Implementing a Safe System Approach requires collaborative engagement among a diverse group of stakeholders to increase safety for all road users. Accordingly, agencies should consider how the PSCs and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Countermeasures that Work can create a system with redundancies in place to protect all road users.
• Format:
  PDF
• Collection(s):
  Federal Highway Administration
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:38af33c02e487c28fa24470874aeeecaf76817acc697efb6d2efb85857956995ad8bce0022ad90145ed1807fc04ca67c99174e7671ef7e2c96f40c418829763a
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/88187/dot_88187_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 6.21 MB ]