2008 Rural Safety Summer Institute

Overview | Program and Presentations

Summer Institute introduces new tools and strategies to reduce rural traffic fatalities

Road safety is a national public health crisis, and it is being ignored by far too many people, according to J. Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Kissinger joined leading state and national traffic safety researchers, policymakers, and professionals as they examined the policies and political challenges to reducing rural traffic fatalities during the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety’s annual Summer Institute on July 28 and 29, 2008. The two-day event, held this year in Santa Rosa, California, was co-hosted by the California Department of Transportation.

The event focused on a variety of rural transportation safety topics, including the latest research, innovative practices, political perspectives, and communications tools. Meeting rural safety needs in new federal transportation funding legislation to succeed SAFETEA-LU, which expires next year, was a key element in much of the discussion throughout the two days. The Summer Institute also introduced the new SafeRoadMaps.org online crash-mapping tool created by a team led by CERS research director Tom Horan.

Taking aim at a 'culture of complacency'

J. Peter Kissinger

“At a time when we have progressive agencies setting zero-death visions, one death should be unacceptable. One death every 13 minutes ought to be an outrage,” Kissinger said during his keynote speech about the foundation’s finding of a “culture of complacency” toward traffic safety. “Yet we as individuals, as motorists, as pedestrians, as citizens, and as society, seem to accept that. We seem to believe that that death toll is the cost we have to pay for the mobility we clearly do enjoy in this country.”

The Summer Institute also featured speakers from Minnesota, California, and across the nation, including: Thomas Barrett, U.S. deputy secretary of transportation; Mike Brown, deputy secretary for public safety, California Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency; Jim Bourgart, deputy secretary for transportation and infrastructure, California Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency; Jim McDonnell, deputy program director for engineering, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); Lauren Stewart, director of the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety; and Cheri Marti, director of the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety.

Robert Johns, director of the Center for Transportation Studies (CTS), served as master of ceremonies and also facilitated a free-flowing conversation among participants discussing promising strategies to raise rural transportation safety on national, state, and local political agendas.

Rural traffic safety viewed as a public policy problem

Lee Munnich with Keith Knapp, Bernie Arseneau, and Robert Johns

During opening remarks, CERS director Lee Munnich set the stage for the annual meeting by providing a brief background about the Center and its mission. He emphasized that not enough is being done, especially in terms of changing human behavior, to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries due to crashes on rural roads. Nationally, about 60 percent of traffic fatalities are rural, the majority of which occur on two-lane roads. The overall number of U.S. traffic fatalities has remained steady at more than 42,000 annually. “We’re trying to help raise the visibility of this issue,” Munnich said. “The problem we really need to address is public policy.”

Presentations and the ensuing discussion incorporated a broad range of ideas, which converged around a sense of urgency to move traffic safety up in priority on the public agenda as well as establish an emotional connection to put faces and their stories on the often mind-numbing statistics. Most felt the payoff of such strategies would be immediate and striking. Kissinger, for instance, estimated that simply implementing known solutions could cut in half the number of serious and fatal crashes.

Among several innovative approaches to traffic safety discussed was one that involves courts using creative sentencing to deal with impaired driving. Judge James Dehn, from Isanti County, Minnesota, described a system he developed for the staggered sentencing of offenders, which has saved the rural county more than $175,000 and reduced second offenses by 50 percent. Moreover, this “drug court on a dime” draws on the help of family, friends, and the community, including the bars. Besides the eventual forgiveness of first offenses, part of the incentive for impaired drivers, too, seems to be the consequences for repeat violations. “The hammer, when it comes down, is incredibly swift,” Dehn said.

Other speakers representing the University of Minnesota included Horan, who, in addition to launching SafeRoadMaps.org, shared the latest CERS research into rural emergency response times and the quality of health care outcomes; Keith Knapp, CERS research manager, who provided an overview of the Center’s research activities; and Mike Manser, director of the HumanFIRST Program at the ITS Institute, who moderated a panel discussion about the role communication tools play in advancing rural traffic safety issues.

Communicating the 'value of every life that is lost'

Jim Bourgart with Mike Miles (left) and Barb Rohde (right)

Manser’s panel stressed that communication is another critical component for effectively addressing rural traffic safety issues by engaging leaders and the public. Anne Staines, a marketing consultant for the California Strategic Highway Safety Plan, reiterated the necessity of changing public attitudes and perceptions to improve traffic safety. She pointed to the importance of public education and empowerment, stakeholder involvement, and research. “We have to create an intrinsic value of every life that is lost,” she said, “and that the life could be you.”

“News media coverage is the coin of the realm for the politician,” reminded Joe Loveland, a CERS communications consultant. “Politicians live and breath what’s in the paper.”

In addition, John Dewar, safety team leader with the Federal Highway Administration, introduced attendees to the Rural Highway Safety Clearinghouse, a Web site launched in June. The new national clearinghouse, developed and maintained by CERS, is part of U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters' national strategy to bring new focus, including resources and new technology, to reducing deaths on the nation's rural roads.

Raising the visibility of rural traffic safety issues

Thomas Barrett with J. Peter Kissinger (left) and Nic Ward

In closing, Deputy Secretary Barrett encouraged Summer Institute participants to persevere as the debate over national transportation funding heats up and to keep an eye on the goal of improving rural traffic safety. “We’re going to do all we can to raise visibility,” he said. “I’m convinced the answers are not going to be found in Washington. They’ll be found in this room, and in our communities”

This was the third meeting of an annual Summer Institute held by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Excellence in Rural Safety (CERS). The two-day gathering, previously held in Duluth, Minnesota (2006), and Burlington, Vermont (2007), is aimed at sharing information, setting research priorities, and developing strategies for improving rural transportation safety.

CERS, which was established by the 2005 federal transportation act, is a program led by Munnich of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, in collaboration with CTS and sponsored by FHWA. Other partners include the New England Transportation Institute (NETI) and the School of Information Systems and Technology at Claremont Graduate University.

PDFs of the PowerPoint presentations by several 2008 CERS Summer Institute speakers are available with the program from the two-day event on the Programs and Presentations page.