News Release
For
Immediate Release
April 24, 2001
Contact: Bill Buff
202-857-1239
New Guide Offers "How To" Advice for
Making Highways
and Bridges Safer
Aims to Reduce the Over 15,000 U.S. Deaths
Annually
Attributable to Bad Roads
WASHINGTON,
D.C. Safety experts agree that poor road conditions and obsolete designs contribute
to more than 15,000 highway deaths annually nearly a third of all fatal crashes,
according to the Roadway Safety Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization.
And unlike other areas of highway safety such as driver behavior and vehicle
design where significant gains have been made, RSF reports that fatalities related
to roadside hazards and run-off-the-road crashes are up 9 percent since 1975.
To combat this alarming trend, RSF in partnership with the
U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration is unveiling
a new Roadway Safety Guide designed to provide
local elected officials and other community leaders with basic information to
improve roadway safety in their community. Written for non-engineers, the guide
is a hands-on, easy-to-use introduction to both common roadway hazards and the
often simple, cost-effective steps that communities can take to make their highways
and bridges safer. The RSF guide is available on-line at www.roadwaysafety.org.
"All of us want safer roads," remarked Tom Chaffin, vice president
of 3M's Traffic Control Materials Division and chairman of RSF's Board of Trustees.
"But community leaders and concerned motorists may not be entirely certain what
kind of highway problems they are confronting, what can reasonably be done about
them, whose job it is to fix these hazards, and how to pay for needed safety improvements.
This guide is designed to help answer those questions."
The
RSF guide urges community leaders to focus on reducing deaths related to run-off-the-road
crashes. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 12,000
people die each year in collisions with roadside hazards such as trees, utility
poles, and embankments, and almost another 3,500 die in rollover crashes, usually
related to veering off the roadway. These types of crashes often occur on roads
that were built decades ago and are now carrying two and three times the traffic
volume for which they were designed.
Specifically, the guide
lists a number of potentially hazardous conditions that can lead to roadway departure
crashes, including: narrow roads and bridges, roadside hazards that are either
too close to the roadway or not protected by guardrails, narrow shoulders that
end in steep slopes or ditches, and intersections that are poorly marked and lighted.
"The key to reducing roadway related fatalities is doing everything
possible to keep drivers on the road and then protecting them if they do leave
the road," said Michael J. McCabe, senior vice president and general counsel for
Allstate Insurance Company. "While there's no silver bullet' for improving roadway
safety, there are a number of options communities should consider." Some of the
highway fixes proposed by the RSF guide include:
