A new report has been published along with a toolkit for strategies to improve rural road safety by the Transportation Research Board (TRB).
The report called ‘Highway Safety Behavioral Strategies for Rural and Tribal Areas: A Guide’, aims to help state and local governments and their partners find the behavioral and engineering strategies that are most appropriate, including laws and regulations, enforcement and adjudication, and public outreach.
It also offers a list of possible actions communities can consider, factors to keep in mind when selecting a strategy and ways to adapt best practices to best suit local safety needs. The report and guide have been released through the Behavioral Traffic Safety Cooperative Research Program (BTSCRP), a collaboration between GHSA, TRB and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The report also identifies key barriers to improved rural road safety and proposes solutions for each one. Embracing the holistic Safe System approach to traffic safety, the toolkit “focuses on merging the traditionally siloed behavioral and infrastructure pieces together,” according to the researchers.
