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Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289 (2007)

Chapter: 5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations

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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations." Transportation Research Board. 2007. Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector: Special Report 289. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12019.
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5 Summary Assessment and Recommendations In this chapter, the committee summarizes its key findings, draws con- clusions from them, and makes a series of recommendations aimed at building and advancing the road safety profession. KEY FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS Road Safety Is a Major Responsibility of Governments at All Levels More than 40,000 people die each year in motor vehicle crashes in the United States. More than 2 million are injured each year. Reducing this toll is a major goal of governments at all levels. Since the 1960s, the number of fatalities per mile driven has fallen by 75 percent owing to a combination of public- and private-sector responses to improve the performance of drivers, motor vehicles, the roadway environment, and postcrash emergency response and trauma care. However, the scope of the problem continues to be immense, and crashes are the leading cause of death among children and young adults. Continued growth in motor vehicle travel means that larger and larger improvements in crash rates are needed to produce any reduction in the total number of people killed and injured in crashes each year. Yet improvements in crash rates in the United States have been lagging behind those of many other developed countries. The public sector has a leading role in furthering road safety. Together, federal, state, and local agencies plan, design, build, operate, and main- tain the highway system. They regulate motor vehicle safety features, edu- cate and license drivers, fund and manage safety research, and establish 73

74 Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector and enforce traffic laws. They provide emergency response and medical services. Yet 50 years ago, finding officials in these agencies with a job title or description emphasizing road safety would have been difficult. For the most part, safety management was viewed as a secondary respon- sibility of other professions. Today, the mission statements of these public agencies indicate that virtually all give prominence to safety. Since the 1960s a number of agencies and offices dedicated to road safety have been created at the federal, state, and local levels, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Admin- istration (FMCSA) in the federal government and offices of the gover- nor’s highway safety representative in all states. The many public agencies that have key safety responsibilities are dispersed widely, both within and across jurisdictions. Such decentralization and fragmentation have long presented a challenge to concerted safety management and to a road safety workforce that is also scattered. Road Safety Management Must Be Guided by Science and a Safe System Perspective Government interventions have had a significant impact on traffic safety. Federal and state laws, policies, and programs aimed at increasing the use of safety belts, reducing impaired driving, and improving the design of vehicles and roadways have been especially beneficial. Although many of these actions are now accepted, most took years to bring about. Many had to overcome institutional, political, legal, and technical barriers. Underlying this success has been a changing view of the nature of motor vehicle crashes. Once viewed as random or “accidental” events, they are now seen as more predictable and susceptible to interventions. In pro- gressive public agencies today, road safety is managed with greater reliance on empirical evidence, statistical analyses, and scientific methods and less on tradition, convention, and intuition. A process has emerged whereby agencies employing expertise from multiple disciplines carry out a cycle of research, dissemination of results, and deployment and evaluation of countermeasures. Scientific methods and empirical evidence are central to the work carried out by these safety professionals. There is increasing recognition of the impor-

Summary Assessment and Recommendations 75 tance of managing safety at a systems level as opposed to focusing on the specific elements of the driver, the vehicle, and the highway. In the safe system approach all factors influencing safety are considered in an inte- grated manner and safety performance is closely monitored by road safety professionals. Road Safety Management Requires a Talented and Diverse Workforce The transition to a scientific and systems-level approach to road safety management has been led by a relatively small group of multidiscipli- nary professionals. Once dominated by traffic engineers and traffic police, the road safety profession has been transformed by the presence of econ- omists, statisticians, planners, psychologists, epidemiologists, policy ana- lysts, mechanical engineers, and others. This diversity of expertise has come to characterize the road safety workforce, with each discipline bring- ing different sets of skills and perspectives to achieve shared safety goals. Nearly 10,000 professionals in federal, state, and local agencies are esti- mated to work full-time in road safety management. A workforce several times as large, on the order of 100,000 workers, regularly influences road safety. The size of the workforce is modest in light of the large number of government agencies that have safety responsibilities. Nationally, there are well over 10,000 such agencies, which means that road safety profes- sionals account for a small fraction of the total workforce of public agen- cies with influence on and responsibility for safety. Most state departments of transportation employ four to five times as many environmental ana- lysts and planners as they do full-time safety professionals, in part because of the need to comply with the requirements of federal and state envi- ronmental laws and regulations. In contrast, most local highway agencies do not employ a single full-time safety specialist. Road Safety Professionals Must Possess a Common Body of Knowledge and Skills Because they are few in number in most public agencies, road safety pro- fessionals must apply their knowledge and skills effectively. In many cases, they are expected not only to provide technical safety expertise within their respective agencies but also to serve as effective advocates for

76 Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector safety in all agency decisions and to mentor the larger number of work- ers who regularly influence safety. To perform competently, road safety professionals must have an understanding of the safety roles of engineer- ing, enforcement, education, and emergency response; the institutional setting for safety management; and the data and information systems available to support safety decisions. The extent to which the nation’s road safety professionals possess rel- evant safety-related knowledge and skills could not be assessed in this study. However, most appear to have relied on on-the-job learning after migrating into the road safety workforce from other disciplines. Many safety professionals entered the field during the 1960s and 1970s, fol- lowing federal highway safety legislation and program expansions. For most of these workers, safety expertise was obtained through work expe- rience and from continuing education and periodic training opportuni- ties during the course of their careers. While such opportunities exist for road safety education and training on discrete topics, there are no pro- grams offering comprehensive training in road safety management. For the larger population of workers who influence road safety, the opportunity for safety training and education is even more limited. Although they do not require the same breadth and depth of safety-related knowledge and abilities as full-time safety professionals, a shared under- standing of safety concepts and methods is essential in pursuing a systems- level approach to safety management. Education and Training Opportunities for Road Safety Are Scarce Some diversity in the means by which road safety professionals gain their safety-related knowledge and expertise is to be expected. However, the absence of more comprehensive road safety education and training pro- grams can have drawbacks in, among other things, building up the work- force quickly, attracting students and young professionals to the field, and recruiting to fill positions. A survey of the curricula and course con- tent of university engineering and public health programs suggests that they are not playing a major role in instilling safety-related knowledge and skills in the road safety workforce. Safety-related content is spotty in both undergraduate and graduate programs, and no program provides

Summary Assessment and Recommendations 77 a comprehensive basis for competency in road safety management. Ref- erence material for supporting road safety curricula is lacking. Until recently, even an outline of the core body of knowledge required for competency in the profession has been missing. Without it, there has been no good way to identify strengths and deficiencies in the knowledge of the safety workforce. Employers have been limited in developing job descriptions, assessing worker qualifications and performance, and iden- tifying the expertise required for effective road safety management at the organizational level. Students and young workers have lacked an over- arching description of the requirements of the profession, which would be helpful for career preparation and development. Education and train- ing institutes have had little to guide them in structuring comprehensive road safety management curricula. The committee believes that the state- ment of NCHRP Research Results Digest 302: Core Competencies for High- way Safety Professionals, released in May 2006, could begin to meet many of these needs, both in its current form and after refinement. Career Advancement in the Road Safety Profession Is Limited Although entire agencies, such as NHTSA and FMCSA, have safety as their primary mission and employ hundreds of full-time safety professionals, the organizational charts of state transportation departments, motor vehicle administrations, planning organizations, public health depart- ments, county road commissions, and state highway patrols contain few top management positions with safety in the title. While some of these agencies have safety offices or divisions, their leaders rarely have safety backgrounds or career paths that progressed through safety units. Findings from panels of agency executives, human resource adminis- trators, and safety professionals that were convened for this study sug- gest that the road safety profession has offered a limited career path that has hindered recruitment. The treatment of safety as an adjunct of other professions such as traffic engineering, education, and law enforcement; the absence of professional associations and comprehensive education and training programs; and the multidisciplinary nature of safety man- agement have contributed to this outcome. Attracting students and young professionals to safety positions in public agencies will require active recruitment and evidence that these positions offer the prospect of career

78 Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector advancement within the organization. A better understanding of the fac- tors influencing career selection and the strengths and weaknesses of the road safety field with respect to these factors is required. The Need for Road Safety Professionals Is Growing The United States, like most industrialized nations, faces a challenge in maintaining a downward trend in motor vehicle fatalities as travel increases. Road safety professionals will require a better understanding of the fac- tors contributing to crashes and their severity, innovative and scientific approaches to finding and evaluating solutions, and greater sophisti- cation in implementing these solutions. The safe system approach also requires application of strategic management skills. Thus, the road safety profession is likely to encompass even more disciplines, which will cre- ate an even greater challenge in developing and maintaining a core of full-time professionals. Public policies have begun to recognize the importance of furthering science-based and strategic approaches to road safety management. In passing the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) in 2005, Congress demanded that state and local governments engage in more rational road safety planning and programming. These requirements fit together with other develop- ments taking place in the field that will require an increasingly skilled, analytical, and knowledgeable safety workforce to implement. Not since the passage of landmark highway safety legislation during the 1960s have so many new and challenging demands been placed on the nation’s road safety workforce. More Attention Must Be Given to Building the Supply of Safety Professionals An increase in demand for road safety professionals is desirable. Whether this demand can be met in a timely manner is open to question. Reliance on the traditional informal approach to developing the workforce runs the risk that many workers will enter the field with limited skills and will depend largely on on-the-job learning to obtain them. The combination of knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively in the

Summary Assessment and Recommendations 79 road safety profession is complex, as reflected in the Core Competencies for Highway Safety Professionals. In many respects, the development of the core competencies has brought greater attention to the risk inherent in expecting the road safety profession to develop in the traditional manner, especially with rising demand. Workforce development takes time. Accordingly, early actions to build the supply of road safety professionals have the greatest potential for ensuring that the demand for qualified professionals can be met. With this timeliness in mind, the committee recommends the following actions. RECOMMENDED ACTIONS The road safety profession is dispersed widely among thousands of pub- lic agencies. The agencies have a common interest in building the supply of safety professionals, but they lack a collective voice to further this inter- est. There is little question that the road safety workforce will need to grow in numbers and skill to meet the public’s demand for safety progress. The field has evolved significantly but through processes that are not well suited to meet growing demands and expectations. Road safety pro- fessionals are developed today much as they were a generation ago, largely through on-the-job experience, and comprehensive road safety education programs, training opportunities, and professional associations are scarce. As a result, the supply of safety professionals equipped for careers pursu- ing science-based and systems-level safety programs cannot be increased quickly. Building the supply will require actions that attract students and young professionals to the field and provide career development oppor- tunities for existing road safety professionals. All public agencies with road safety responsibility have an interest in bringing about such change. By working together, they have a better chance of succeeding. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Governors Highway Safety Association Should Forge a Broad-Based Alliance to Advance the Road Safety Profession The committee recommends the creation of a broad-based alliance to advance the road safety profession. States and their national associations

80 Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector are urged to take the first steps in forging this alliance, which must involve organizations with a strong interest in road safety across the pub- lic sector, private industry, and academia. State governments have responsibilities that affect all aspects of road safety. They plan, design, build, operate, and maintain large portions of the highway infrastructure; pass and enforce traffic safety laws; regulate driver instruction and licensing; and administer statewide programs aimed at encouraging safe driving behavior. States employ thousands of road safety professionals and must have a central role in any effort to develop the profession. The two national associations with state mem- bers who are responsible for many of these safety-related functions are the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). In the committee’s view, these two associations are logical entities to take the lead in constructing a partnership of organizations to advance the road safety profession. Accordingly, the committee urges AASHTO and GHSA to begin the process of forging a broad-based alliance to advance the road safety profession. To be effective, the alliance must have influential members from fed- eral, state, and local agencies and associations as well as the private sector and academia. AASHTO and GHSA are capable of identifying and urg- ing the participation of the many entities that should be active members. From the federal government, the Federal Highway Administration, NHTSA, FMCSA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are logical candidates. Associations representing other state agen- cies and local governments, including the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, the American Association of Metropolitan Plan- ning Organizations, the American Public Works Association, Local Tech- nical Assistance Program Centers, the National Association of Regional Councils, and the National Association of County Engineers, are similarly desirable participants. The participation of national associations of local governments is especially important because of the role of counties, municipalities, and towns in ensuring road safety. The committee urges that efforts be made to involve national organi- zations representing the enforcement community, such as the Interna- tional Association of Chiefs of Police and the Commercial Vehicle Safety

Summary Assessment and Recommendations 81 Alliance, as well as the transportation profession and University Trans- portation Centers, which are well represented by the Institute of Trans- portation Engineers, the Transportation and Development Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Safety Engineers, the Council of University Transportation Centers, the American Planning Association, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research. The alliance should also seek the support of private-sector organizations and associations that have an interest in building the road safety workforce. The Alliance Should Champion the Road Safety Profession on Multiple Fronts The committee envisions an alliance whose activities and actions will help meet current workforce needs and foster the development of the profession over the longer term. The alliance should take the following actions: • Promote a multidisciplinary road safety workforce that recognizes the importance of and is capable of applying a science-based and systems-level approach to safety management. • Commend and publicize public agencies that are leading the way in recruiting, developing, and sustaining a professional road safety work- force, including those providing comprehensive education and training opportunities and desirable career paths for safety professionals. • Encourage the continued development and more widespread use of core competency definitions to guide the education, training, and promotion of road safety professionals. The alliance can encourage the use of core competencies for developing comprehensive, science- based, and multidisciplinary education and training programs; estab- lishing job and career path descriptions; assessing worker qualifications and job performance; and establishing the safety qualifications of per- sonnel in procurement contracts. • Promote road safety management as a distinct profession and a desir- able career path, in particular by seeking the creation of a road safety professional society that supports professional development, explores

82 Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector and promotes means of attracting students and young professionals to the field, encourages safety education and research, and facilitates the exchange of information among road safety professionals. • Persuade public agencies, industry, and universities of the value of forming education and training partnerships that offer prag- matic experience to students and young professionals, attract qualified students to the safety field, and provide an avenue for science-based safety methods to become standard practice in the field. • Advocate support for science-based safety research to inform road safety professionals and to attract top faculty and students to the field from many disciplines. The alliance could seek the creation of schol- arships, internships, training grants, endowed university chairs, and research centers across the disciplines contributing to road safety. The alliance should take a leadership role in advancing these goals. In particular, the alliance should urge all states to take advantage of fed- eral workforce training funds for the purpose of developing road safety professionals. SAFETEA-LU raised the stature of road safety by establishing highway safety improvement as a core program, tied to strategic safety planning and performance. The act allows states to use federal funds for workforce training and other educational activities; however, it does not contain directives or guidance on using the avail- able funds for safety-related training. Following through on the safety planning and implementation requirements of SAFETEA-LU will require a well-trained road safety workforce. The alliance can bring greater attention to this need and encourage states to devote sufficient training funds to meeting it. As documented in this study, road safety education and training oppor- tunities are fragmented, and no comprehensive programs are available for students and safety workers. The alliance should seek to bring about more comprehensive and multidisciplinary road safety education and training programs. In particular, the alliance should advocate road safety education and training by universities and publicly funded safety research institutions. Many universities have strong safety research programs but limited instructional programs tied to this research. An emphasis on coupling research with technology transfer, education, and training is desirable. For example, the committee observes that the

Summary Assessment and Recommendations 83 University Transportation Centers, funded in part by the U.S. Depart- ment of Transportation, and the Injury Control Research Centers, funded in part by CDC, can play stronger roles in road safety education and training. Overcoming the lack of comprehensive road safety education and training programs covering the core competencies may require addi- tional steps. The alliance could explore the establishment of one or more specialized education and training institutes to provide com- prehensive instruction and training for road safety professionals. The curricula and course content should be based on the core competen- cies and make use of affordable and accessible means of instruction, including distance-based learning. If a compelling case can be made, the alliance may examine ways to create such institutes, perhaps through the pooling of resources by public agencies with road safety responsibility. As highway technologies change, new challenges will emerge requir- ing the expertise of safety professionals. The technologies themselves may offer new tools and resources for safety management. For example, intelligent transportation systems may introduce new technologies that affect safety directly and provide new capabilities for road safety moni- toring and evaluation. The alliance will be in a good position to monitor the effect of technological change on demand for road safety profession- als and on the opportunities to apply technology to improve safety. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS Most technical fields have become increasingly professional in character. They are accompanied by degree-granting programs, certification and credentialing processes, professional societies, and a defining core body of knowledge and skills. While road safety management has been head- ing in the same general direction, it has lacked many of these features. One reason for this situation may be that road safety management is multidisciplinary and the workforce is spread among many organizations having a wide range of perspectives, roles, and responsibilities. The safety problem is highly complex and becoming more challenging. Hence, accelerating the professionalization of road safety management is, in the committee’s view, necessary for continued safety progress. If the

84 Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector recommended alliance of interest is created, it could draw attention to the need for professionalizing road safety management, which would advance the profession and its positive influence on safety. Federal, state, and local governments are becoming more aware of the need for science- based and systems-level approaches to safety management. The commit- tee is confident that its recommendations are complementary to these goals and anticipates that they will be welcomed by the organizations urged to carry them out.

Next: APPENDIX A: Agenda, August 2006 Committee Meeting and Workshop »
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TRB Special Report 289: Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector examines the growing need for experts at all levels of government to develop and implement systems- and science-based approaches to road safety management. According to the committee that authored the report, the lack of professional recognition and comprehensive road safety education and training opportunities is threatening the ability of public agencies to build the knowledgeable and skilled road safety workforce that is needed to make safety advances. To address this need, the report recommends that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Governors Highway Safety Association forge a broad-based alliance of public, private, and educational organizations to champion the road safety profession. The report recommends that the alliance encourage states to take advantage of federal workforce training funds for the purpose of developing road safety professionals and to advocate comprehensive road safety education and training by universities, including the many publicly funded transportation and safety research centers. In addition, the report urges the alliance to explore the creation of one or more specialized institutes to provide comprehensive instruction and training for road safety professionals.

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