2006 Rural Safety Summer Institute

Overview | Program

Summer Institute addresses themes, strategies for rural safety center

Summer Institute

Three dozen leading state and national transportation officials, researchers, policymakers, and professionals joined U.S. Rep. James L. Oberstar in Duluth on July 24 and 25, 2006, to develop strategies for improving rural safety.

This was the first meeting of an annual Summer Institute that figures prominently into plans for supporting the newly established Center for Excellence in Rural Safety, led by Lee Munnich of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. CTS, with staff leadership from Gina Baas, is collaborating with the Humphrey Institute to provide the Center’s outreach services, including coordination of the Summer Institute. Other partners include the School of Information Systems and Technology, (Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California) and the New England Transportation Institute (White River Junction, Vermont).

A comprehensive approach to rural transportation safety

Rep. James L. Oberstar

Congress created the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety in July 2005 as part of a broader, multiyear, multimillion-dollar directive establishing four national centers for surface transportation excellence in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) transportation funding legislation. Congressman Oberstar, representing Minnesota’s eighth congressional district since 1975 and senior Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, has long championed rural transportation issues. He planted seeds for what has become the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety during a policy address in Duluth at a 2004 transportation policy and technology forum named in his honor and hosted by CTS.

To conclude his remarks, Oberstar stressed the need to transform rural America with the same energy and thinking that went into the creation of the interstate highway system connecting the country. He cited the ideas of sociologist Thorstein Veblen from a century ago, calling small towns America’s greatest institution and the source of the values that motivate our country. “To preserve it,” he said, “we need to keep it mobile, keep it competitive, keep it in-touch, and keep it safe.”

Citizen-centered research, training, and outreach

The mission of the new Center is to provide citizen-centered research, training, and outreach to enhance rural safety and to meet the online and seminar training needs of rural transportation practitioners and policymakers. The Center will conduct several focused research activities to explore policy, behavior, and technology approaches, such as projects addressing safety-conscious planning, ITS and rural emergency response, integrated policy approaches, and related human factors, societal trends, and stakeholder needs analysis.

Center director Munnich, also director of the Humphrey Institute’s State and Local Policy Program, stressed the need for building strategic collaborations to leverage a wealth of existing research and expertise in rural safety while also carving out areas the Center can most effectively contribute in-depth to the issues at hand. Noting the politically charged nature of rural safety issues, he said he favors a “grasstops” approach—first cultivating support from the governor, legislators, and other elected officials. “We need to get out to the broader public,” Munnich added. “But part of what we need to do is to get messages to policy leaders about why this is such an important issue, why this should be higher on their agenda.”

Research director Tom Horan, a visiting scholar at the Humphrey Institute and executive director of the Claremont Information and Technology Institute, described the purpose of the Summer Institute as building awareness about the Center among its many stakeholders and collaborating to finalize research themes and focus areas. The ultimate goal, he said, is to develop policy recommendations for decision makers. He outlined in detail a three-part, five-year plan built around behavioral, technology, and policy issues related to rural transportation safety.

Translating research and policy into strategies

Horan introduced three key questions for consideration over the two days as preparation for several presentations, small group brainstorming sessions, and for the main event prior to the conclusion of this summer’s Institute—a lengthy, facilitated conversation among participants focused on the Center’s role and the needs and expectations of key stakeholders for research, education, and outreach. Those questions sought to identify the behavioral, technological, and institutional barriers and challenges to advancing rural safety public policy, the research needed to address them, and ways to translate that research and policy into strategies to deal with rural crashes.

A panel comprised of mostly University researchers provided an overview of rural traffic safety issues and their impacts, concentrating presentations and discussion on the three research focus areas of the Center. Nic Ward, director of the HumanFIRST Program at the University, probed the behavior of rural drivers and the relationship to traffic safety. “We're most concerned about how certain risky behaviors lead to a crash,” he said. “We need to understand how the culture influences the behavior.”

Next, University mechanical engineering professor Max Donath, director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Institute, added a technological perspective to the research panel, updating attendees on the latest tools and systems to help drivers avoid crashes. Ann Dellinger, an epidemiologist and team leader for motor vehicle injury prevention with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, offered a public health framework for traffic safety. To wrap up the panel, Tom Horan presented his research into rural emergency response systems, especially their impact on surviving a crash in a rural area.

Mike Halladay

Another panel supplied a national perspective on current programs and research related to rural safety, and suggested topics for future. Mike Halladay and Cynthia Burbank with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Richard Compton of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and Anthony Kane with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) discussed recent transportation safety research initiatives and projects conducted at the national level as they relate to the three research focus areas of the Center. “Highway safety is a top priority,” said Halladay, director of program integration and delivery for the FHWA Office of Safety. “We're very excited about the tools and focus on rural safety that the Center is going to give us.”

Opportunities for collaboration

During another panel, Thomas Adler and Matthew Coogan of the New England Transportation Institute (NETI) described current rural transportation research efforts in Vermont and presented opportunities for collaboration that will facilitate the national scope of the Center. Adler, co-founder and former director of NETI, will serve as technical advisor and liaison between the Center and NETI. In addition, NETI plans to host the Center’s 2007 Summer Institute.

Coogan, director of NETI, pointed out that while a great body of useful research has been undertaken on the behavioral aspects of roadway safety, the causes of risk-taking behavior and sensation-seeking behavior has not been scientifically applied to the urban-versus-rural issue. Specifically, he presented findings that conclude males, ages 20 to 24, from the “least dense” (rural) areas in the United States die in crashes at five times the rate their urban counterparts do. “There is a major phenomenon going on here and we have the research tools to deal with the behavioral issues,” he said. “There's a real chance in the next year and a half for our coordinated group to make a real dent in this subject.”

Representatives from the Minnesota Toward Zero Deaths Program, whose partners are key Center stakeholders, also presented background about their state-level traffic safety activities and grassroots initiatives. Minnesota Department of Transportation assistant state traffic engineer Susan Groth and Minnesota Department of Public Safety traffic safety director Kathryn Swanson described a “rural mindset” that often contributes to traffic fatalities and shared their experiences in raising public awareness for combating crashes and related deaths in the state during the past five years.

A Minnesota model

Anthony Kane

During a facilitated conversation that continued for nearly two hours, attendees identified more than a dozen of the Center’s key stakeholder groups, discussed stakeholder expectations, possible outreach and training strategies, and research needed to advance rural safety public policy. Though ideas flew around the circle a furious pace—sometimes clashing—nearly all agreed that, because of the opportunities afforded by the new Center, they are looking to Minnesota to lead the way in rural transportation safety. “Our expectation,” said AASHTO’s Anthony Kane, “is that we make Minnesota a model.”