Traffic Safety
Purpose
Traveler Safety is a core value of the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Every project, regardless of size and complexity, represents an opportunity to improve the safety of the transportation network. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requires all states to have a Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). The SHSP is the overall plan that identifies major trends in the crash data and the strategies to reduce those crashes. The goal of the SHSP and the Minnesota Department of Transportation is to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes.
When to use this subject
Minnesota created the Minnesota Toward Zero Death (MN TZD) as the cornerstone to its traffic safety program. It uses a data-driven, interdisciplinary approach that targets areas for improvement and applies proven countermeasures to integrate education, enforcement, engineering, and emergency medical and trauma services (the 4 Es).
You will need to implement the engineering aspect of MN TZD on all highway and bridge projects. Every construction project undertaken by MnDOT represents an opportunity to improve the safety of the transportation network by changing the infrastructure and implementing the current best practices in the field.
Depending on the nature and scope of the project, there are often competing interests and opportunities within a project. This can even include traffic safety components and alternatives. The project manager will need to navigate these issues, and the SHSP and OTE can provide information about the crashes and types of crashes that would most likely lead to severe crashes based on context, traffic volume, speed, and other factors.
Project development should emphasize implementing strategies that will most likely reduce severe crashes, even at the expense of increasing other non-severe or property damage crashes.
How this subject fits into the overall project development process
Begin looking at traffic safety in the pre-scoping or scoping phase after the completion of a crash analysis. Finish traffic safety work before layout development.
For larger projects and corridor improvement projects, the Intersection Control Evaluation (ICE) may be needed during corridor planning or in conjunction with those efforts. Since intersections can greatly contribute to the traffic safety of a corridor, the use and development of ICE for designated intersections can vastly influence the traffic safety performance of a corridor upon completion. The ICE process can be done at many different stages, but the larger and more complex a project will be, the earlier the ICE planning process should begin.
Organizations involved
- MnDOT:
- Traffic Safety Unit
- Project Managers
- District Design
- District Traffic
- Regional Toward Zero Death Coordinator
- FHWA
- Municipalities and counties