NCHRP Research Report 1135 presents a guide for applying the Safe System Approach among state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other transportation agencies. Based on extensive stakeholder outreach including practitioner focus groups, the guide covers six domains of practice in transportation safety, which users can draw from based on their organizational interests, competencies, and safety-oriented goals. The guide should be of particular use to state DOTs and any other transportation agency seeking to provide resources for transportation planners, designers, and operations managers to implement Safe System principles and make the systems under their jurisdictions safer.
The Safe System Approach is a holistic approach that provides a framework for making the national transportation system safer. A Safe System is based on building and reinforcing multiple layers of protection to prevent crashes from happening and minimize the harm caused when crashes occur. This approach differs from conventional safety approaches, since it focuses on human vulnerability and designs a system with many redundancies to protect all transportation users. Despite increased interest in Safe System, few guidelines exist for transportation planners, designers, and operations managers for implementing a Safe System. For Safe System to be fully implemented, it must address not only infrastructure design but also vehicle design, policies and law, recognition of share safety responsibility, road user behavior, and public culture, all of which will require some degree of change. Research was needed to begin providing resources for transportation planners, designers, and operations managers to consult during safety problem identification, project development, and countermeasure selection.
Under NCHRP Project 17-101, “Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations in the United States,” the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill was asked to develop materials that would enable a range of professionals and organizations to adopt and implement the Safe System Approach in their work. Using extensive outreach to a variety of safety stakeholders, the research team identified strategies, practices, and policies for implementing the Safe System Approach in the United States then modularized them using six domains of practice integral to implementation. The resultant guide provides safety teams with the foregoing resources and a Safe System Strategy Implementation Self-Assessment designed to offer insight into teams’ progress in implementing Safe System-aligned strategies across domains of practice.
In addition to NCHRP Research Report 1135, the following deliverables can be found on the National Academies Press website (nap.nationalacademies.org) by searching for NCHRP Research Report 1135.
