Safety: In Brief
40 Commercial Carrier Journal September 2008 safety A cting Federal Highway Administrator Jim Ray issued a call to arms on highway safety, urging state Departments of Transportation to adopt more coordinated, systemwide approaches to reduce crashes. Each year, nearly 43,000 people motorists, passengers and pedestrians die on America's roads. Though the fatal-ity rate 1.41 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled is the lowest in the nation's history, the number of fatalities has hovered at about the same point for nearly five years. FHWA safety officials met with transportation officials and safety experts July 25 in a webinar as part of a new effort to improve roadway safety nationally. In it, the agency strongly recommended better use of nine tools that are key to reducing roadway fatalities each year: Roadway safety audits State DOTs should formal-ize the use of these audits, which are comprehensive evaluations of existing or planned roads or intersec-tions to identify potential safety improvements. Rumble strips and rumble stripes Used in the center-line and shoulders, these cost-effective devices have shown demonstrable improve-ment in warning drivers of lane departure, reducing by 14 percent head-on colli-sions and opposite-direction sideswipe crashes. Shoulder rumble strips and stripes have shown a 38 percent reduction in run-off-road crashes on freeways. Median barriers Used to separate opposing traffic on divided highways, these barriers have a long track record of reducing cross-median collisions. Safety Edge This paving technique, giving a 30- to 35-degree slope to the road's edge, reduces the risk to drivers if their tire inadvertently falls over an otherwise near-vertical road edge, leading to loss of vehicle control and rollover. Roundabouts Have demonstrated a 60- to 87-percent reduction in crashes. Turning lanes at stop-controlled intersections At intersections with significant turning volume, turning lanes for right- and left-turns on major road approaches can reduce crashes dramatically in some cases, by as much as 55 percent. Yellow change intervals Red-light running crashes at intersections, which too fre-quently result in fatalities, can be reduced by setting yellow-light signals properly. Medians and pedestrian refuge areas in urban and suburban areas Raised medians or pedestrian refuge areas at pedestrian crossings at marked crosswalks have shown a 46 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes. Walkways Ensuring a sidewalk or pathway exists near a roadway can reduce pedestrian crashes by as much as 88 percent. To review FHWA's new policy, go to http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ memo071008.htm. A `call to arms' for states Roads can be safer, FHWA chief says Iteris will be the exclusive North American commercial vehicle dis-tributor of Delphi's radar-based for-ward collision warning system under a new agreement between the two companies. Iteris, which also will be authorized to market Delphi's Side Alert blind spot warning system, cur-rently markets its own vision-based lane departure warning system. known as the Interstate 5 bridge between Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash. received national priority status from the White House. The designa-tion will help speed decision-making by officials while maintaining all fed-eral and state environmental review requirements for the project, which has received $15 million in federal funding. The project is intended to reduce grid-lock and improve safety problems on a five-mile stretch of I-5, which includes the Portland-Vancouver bridge. has allocated more than $1 million to continue federal support of public education efforts aimed at reducing collisions between trains and motor vehicles at highway-rail grade cross-ings and discouraging illegal tres-passing along railroad rights of way. The grant will help fund Operation Lifesaver, a national not-for-profit rail safety organization. recognized Jimmy Wallace, a driver for Stallion Transportation Group in Beebe, as its 2007 Driver of the Year. Wallace, 76, has logged more than 4 million accident-free miles and 30 consecutive years without a preventable accident. in brief Acting Federal Highway Administrator Jim Ray issued a call to arms on highway safety, urg-ing state Departments of Transportation to adopt more coordinated, sys-temwide approaches to reduce crashes.