ITE Journal - June 2021 - 31

ITE Leadership
As a community of transportation professionals, ITE International
has been a leader in the Safe System Approach over the past several
years, providing national leadership in advancing understanding and adoption of the practice in the United States. ITE has
partnered with organizations such as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Road to Zero Coalition under the National
Safety Council (NSC), and many other organizations to further
the Safe System Approach by developing resources, engaging
with subject matter experts, and educating government leaders
and industry practitioners on the subject. Additionally, ITE has
developed and compiled a wealth of resources on the Safe System
Approach-such as webinars, podcasts, reports, case studies, and
ITE Journal articles-many of which are available on ITE's website
at www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/safe-systems. Through
these partnerships, resources, and initiatives, ITE has been
proactive in moving the topic forward and being a champion for
the Safe System Approach in the United States.

A Time for Action
Currently there is a clear opportunity to embrace the Safe System
Approach through funding, policy, and program incentives and
guidance. A strong push by the Biden Administration for a major
infrastructure investment through focused, equitable investments,
combined with the need for the U.S. Congress to reauthorize the
federal surface transportation program in 2021, set the stage for a
set of policy recommendations around the Safe System Approach.
A $2 trillion USD infrastructure improvement proposal was
recently introduced, including comprehensive transportation
safety improvements in the amount of approximately $600 billion
USD. A new federal surface transportation bill is also being
formulated this year, entailing policy discussions through the
nation's transportation system.

Recommendations of the
Safe System Consortium

Read the
Report
For the full Safe System
Consortium report
from the Johns Hopkins
Center for Injury
Resarch and Policy and
ITE, visit http://bit.ly/
SafeSystemConsortium.

Center for Injury Research and Policy

These funding efforts, coupled with the entrance of a new presidential administration and new leadership in the U.S. Department
of Transportation (USDOT), will create the perfect conditions for
lawmakers and transportation leaders at the municipal, state, and
local levels to shift their approach to roadway safety to one that
aligns with Safe System principles.

Recommendations
The three areas for change each include a related set of recommendations, and each recommendation is accompanied by a more
specific set of actions to achieve them.

Change Area 1: Safety across the System
The Consortium recognizes the need to leverage the federal surface
transportation bill and the influence that the hundreds of billions
of dollars authorized by this legislation can have-directly and
indirectly-on road owners across the nation. The Consortium also
recognizes the influence that transportation has on other social
needs such as housing, employment, education, health, and the
environment, and urges a broader consideration of sources for
funding, collaborations, and other resources that could facilitate
realization of a holistic vision for a Safe System.
Leadership is needed to address a significant barrier to Safe System
implementation, the entrenched assumption that crash injuries are
exclusively the fault of the victim or other road user, and that road or
vehicle designers can do little to compensate. While road users should
be expected to take reasonable care, blaming the victim for crash
injuries lessens the motivation for improvements to the system-both
to roadway and vehicle design-and only prolongs the safety problem.

Change Area 2: Equity though Investment
When applied equitably, Safe System investments are made
proactively and systemically to prevent serious crashes and
reduce crash forces where crashes persist, saving lives, improving
mobility, and enhancing access to health determinants across the
community. However, achieving equity in Safe System investment
will require overcoming structural racism in long-standing
processes that have been barriers to improving roads in historically
underserved communities and communities of color. Other barriers
include a lack of engagement of marginalized communities in
investment-related decision-making by local authorities and lack of
measurement methods that are sensitive to the range of healthrelated consequences of transportation infrastructure conditions.4, 5
The Consortium recommendations in this area are intended to
reduce the risks faced by road users in underserved communities and
optimize the potential for a Safe System to contribute to transportation equity and health equity. These actions will bolster leadership
for equitable investment of resources for Safe System implementation
and upgrade decision-making criteria that overlook the needs of
w w w .i t e.or g

J u ne 2021

31
http://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/safe-systems http://www.bit.ly/SafeSystemConsortium http://www.bit.ly/SafeSystemConsortium http://www.ite.org
ITE Journal - June 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ITE Journal - June 2021
