What your road safety analysis is missing: 3 important factors
December 09, 2025
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Do you want a plan that protects pedestrians, bicyclists, and those in vehicles? Layer this into your safety action plan.
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Roadway safety in the US is not trending in the right direction. In many cities and communities, fatal and severe injury crashes are up. And who is often at the biggest risk? Pedestrians and bicyclists¡ªthose outside of vehicles. Advances in vehicle design have made people inside vehicles safer, but how do we improve the safety of everyone, including those traveling on foot, by bike, or other modes?
It starts with the right approach to your road safety analysis.
Working on nearly 40 U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and road safety projects, we¡¯ve done it all. A main finding from our experience? Many communities ask for near-miss collision data to supplement crash and injury data in their road safety analysis. But it only tells part of the story. We want to share three key considerations to layer into a safety analysis to help improve your Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) safety action plan. They are:
- How to enhance your Vision Zero/SS4A plan¡¯s road safety analysis.
- How to build a smarter, more predictive High Injury Network (HIN)
- ?How to properly use community input to positively impact roadway safety
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Road safety involves many elements. The Safe System Approach can help reduce fatalities¡ªnot just for those in vehicles but for everyone.
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1. Using road safety data to create a predictive model
Is your community thinking about creating or updating a Vision Zero, SS4A, or local safety action plan? Most municipalities use detailed crash analyses to inform their plan. But that piece of your road safety analysis can only get you so far. What¡¯s the challenge? By only looking at crash and near-miss collision data, you¡¯re pointing your investments at locations where you know crashes and near-misses have already occurred.
By layering in a systemic or risk-based analysis, you can take a much more thoughtful approach based on prevention. This can help find the locations where you might not have had a severe injury or death yet but are at risk of having them in the future.
Comprehensive data helps us work with clients to build processes that reduce traffic injuries and save lives. This approach guided our work on the Vision Zero Safety Action Plan for the City of Worcester, Massachusetts.
We paired online and in-person surveys and feedback with data-driven insights on crash trends and risk factors to develop a HIN and Priority Network. They pinpoint where the most severe injury crashes, threats, and concerns have occurred in the past. They also point out where they¡¯d be most likely to occur in the future. We also applied an equity analysis to the layered networks to explore how traffic crashes impact underserved communities.
The final Vision Zero Safety Action Plan and supporting analyses define where the City and its partners can focus their safety improvement efforts for years to come.
" }Our clients want more than reactive police-collected crash data. They want proactive solutions that help prevent crashes.
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2. Building a model that tells us where to prioritize safety projects
Building an HIN from crash and injury data gives cities a clear map of where to invest in safety projects. In the best cases, cities will be able to identify the small percentage of streets where most of the fatal and severe injuries occur. Spotting these streets helps cities focus resources where they will make the biggest impact.
Interest in street-safety data is growing fast. And smart data can help. Cities are looking beyond traditional crash reports and exploring smart technologies. These include
- Near-miss detection
- Vehicle and smartphone movement data
- Hard-braking alerts
Our clients want more than reactive police-collected crash data. They want proactive solutions that help prevent crashes. New innovations in data, analyses, and visualizations are helping communities move the needle toward zero.
Data analytics is key to applying the Safe System Approach effectively. It helps cities to layer redundant strategies, break down government silos, and work together. We¡¯re working to bring cities the next level of predictive thinking and a layered road safety analysis that adds value to a safety action plan.
The goal is simple: Identify your community¡¯s unique risk factors and eliminate them. That¡¯s the true spirit of Vision Zero and SS4A.??
We use a three-prong weighted approach to create a prioritized investment network.
- Trends (Reactive): Where crashes and injuries have happened in recent years, with a focus on where fatal and severe injury crashes occur based on past crash trends.
- Risks (Predictive): Where high-risk contexts occur, vulnerable road user locations based on HIN.
- Community Input: Where do people feel unsafe? Locations locals know about and near-miss concerns.
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School students safely walk across a busy street¡¯s crosswalk. The crosswalk was made more visible to passing vehicles after the demonstration project as part of the Worcester Vision Zero Safety Action Plan.
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3. Asking the right questions to outline the future of road safety in your community
Safety is a priority for many cities. But not all have looked at crash injury data with the deep focus on reducing fatal and severe injuries that a safety action plan brings. Analyzing and understanding this data creates a path forward toward safer streets and safer communities. Let¡¯s start by asking a few key questions.
- Are you analyzing your crash and injury data with a focus on fatal and severe injuries?
- Are you analyzing near-miss data in your road safety analysis?
- Have you crafted your past road safety projects specifically to reduce fatal and severe injuries??
- Have your past projects been evaluated? Can you verify they are reducing traffic fatalities and severe injuries? ??
- Does your town have an action plan that creates real transparency and accountability around its traffic fatality tally each year? Are you working to reduce them? ?
The reality is that most of our clients don¡¯t have all the answers¡ªand that¡¯s okay. Road safety isn¡¯t just one group¡¯s responsibility.
We work with cities and towns to write safety action plans that go beyond a planning document. Together, we identify investment priorities and design processes that fit your government¡¯s structure. These processes help deliver strategic projects and establish monitoring practices to aid accountability in delivering on the promise to reduce traffic fatalities.
Our goal is to turn your road safety analysis into a living document¡ªone that your leaders use to guide your community¡¯s traffic fatality reduction plan. You will need a customized process to create an accountability feedback loop. It will help keep your municipality¡¯s future staff aware and savvy about road safety, working to move the needle toward zero. ?
Where does your road safety analysis and planning go from here?
It¡¯s time to improve road safety, but that also requires funding. Our team has made safety action planning and implementation a high priority, with years of experience in road safety analysis. With the help of our North American Funding Program team, we¡¯ve secured nearly $50 million in SS4A funding for our clients in the last four years¡ªthat includes both planning and demonstration projects along with implementation projects.
No project is the same. We must use best practices in data and road safety analysis, design, and community engagement to get results. Effective road safety analysis benefits from combining multiple perspectives and ²İİ®´«Ã½. It must move ?beyond isolated data or design efforts to create more holistic solutions.
Most communities have safety as a top priority. But we are in a new era of road safety analysis that focuses on reducing traffic fatalities and severe injuries. As priorities center on reducing traffic deaths, the Safe System Approach¡ªbuilt on redundant strategies¡ªhas become central to modern road safety planning. Collaboration with the right partners is key to making meaningful progress toward safer streets.
We believe we can get there¡ªif we work together.
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