2009 Rural Safety Summer Institute

Overview | Program and Presentations

Summer Institute explores strategies for improving rural traffic safety as authorization looms on national horizon

Emil Frankel

“We’ve pretty much, in my view, lost our way in surface transportation policy,” said Emil Frankel, director of transportation policy with the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Frankel, calling for true policy reform, joined leading state and national traffic safety researchers, policymakers, and professionals to consider how rural traffic safety might fare in new transportation funding legislation. The remarks came during the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety’s annual Summer Institute on August 3 and 4, 2004. The two-day event, held this year in Williamsburg, Virginia, was co-hosted by the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The event focused on a variety of rural transportation safety topics, including the role of rural safety in meeting a national safety goal, state and local initiatives, the latest research and technology, and political perspectives. Determining rural safety priorities for new federal transportation funding legislation to succeed SAFETEA-LU, which expires this fall, framed much of the discussion throughout the two days.

Call for ‘significant reformation of federal programs, including highway safety’

“As we shape the new bill, if there is an extension period, I don’t think we can afford to lose the time and the opportunity,” Frankel said during his keynote speech. “We need to begin the process which Congressman Oberstar and others have called for—fundamentally redefining the federal role in surface transportation and a significant reformation of federal programs, including highway safety.”

The Summer Institute also featured speakers from Virginia, the Washington, D.C., area, Minnesota, and across the nation, from Vermont to California. Featured speakers included David Heymsfeld, staff director of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; Joe Toole, associate administrator for safety, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA); Jack Basso, director of program finance and management, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); Dave Ekern, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation; Pete Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation; and Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association.

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.

Awareness and understanding seen as key to rural traffic safety

During opening remarks, CERS director Lee Munnich set the stage for the annual event with a review of the Center’s mission, focus, capabilities, and accomplishments. He explained that CERS is particularly focused on raising awareness and understanding of rural safety issues, especially among policymakers, because the rate of U.S. traffic fatalities in rural areas is more than twice that of urban areas. “Even though we’ve seen reductions in fatalities, we all know we have a long ways to go,” he said. “We want to build on the momentum that we’ve seen already.”

Cheri Marti, Brian McLaughlin, and Joe Toole

Next, a broad range of presentations inspired discussion largely focused on finding a clear national consensus for effective, workable solutions to improve rural traffic safety. Many alluded to the significant opportunity at hand as the federal funding authorization process heats up, hoping to craft a seminal piece of legislation to shape transportation in the 21st century. In addition to severe funding constraints as the result of a troubled economy, coordination of efforts among government agencies down to the local level and cultural complacency toward safety remain significant challenges.

Max Donath

Other speakers representing the University of Minnesota included CERS research director Tom Horan, who provided an overview of the newly enhanced SafeRoadMaps.org as well as an update about CERS research into rural emergency response times and the quality of health care outcomes; Gina Baas, CERS program delivery director, who highlighted communications, a growing list of program partners, and the development safety training for local practitioners and policymakers; Keith Knapp, CERS director of transportation safety engineering, who discussed his research about a rural safety policy improvement index; and Max Donath, director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Institute, who described a variety of available technologies with the capability to reduce rural fatalities and life-changing crashes.

More about the CERS Summer Institute

CERS director Lee Munnich honors David Heymsfeld, staff director of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, for his work to create CERS as part of the 2005 federal transportation act.

This was the fourth 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), Burlington, Vermont (2007), and Santa Rosa, California (2008), 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.