Putting the pieces together: Washington State's safety management system helps communities to reduce crash rates and save lives

Public Roads, March-April, 2003 by Dan Sunde

The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 mandated that each State develop and implement a safety management system (SMS)--a set of systematic processes used to identify opportunities to improve driver and vehicle safety during each phase of highway projects and in the development of other vehicle and transportation programs.

Although the original ISTEA mandate was later repealed, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) embarked on a mission in 1991 to develop a manual to help local agencies implement safety management systems, known as local agency safety management systems (LASMS).

In 1998, WSDOT completed the 83-page LASMS manual, which is now posted on the WSDOT Web site. The manual provides local agencies with a detailed explanation of how to develop and structure an LASMS. It also contains a 25-page appendix of forms and reports that an agency can use to help implement its system.

Manual Nuts and Bolts

WSDOT designed the LASMS manual as a tool to help local agencies take a broader approach to transportation safety and design projects that would prevent and reduce the number and severity of roadway collisions, transportation-related injuries, and property damage. The manual provides local agencies with a framework for establishing an objective and flexible decisionmaking process for selecting and implementing cost-effective safety strategies.

"The manual gives local agencies the framework for selecting, quantifying, and tracking the performance of safety projects and for monitoring how effectively transportation funds are being used," says Dave Sorensen, traffic technology engineer at WSDOT. "It also will help ensure that safety projects are being implemented consistently throughout the State."

In developing the manual, WSDOT incorporated many of the SMS guidelines originally proposed in ISTEA, such as encouraging the development of a formalized communication process involving all four "F" activities--engineering, education, emergency services, and enforcement--in selecting safety projects. The manual also includes roadway, human behavior, and vehicle safety elements within safety programs.

To develop the manual, WSDOT's Highway and Local Programs Division (previously called TransAid) worked with a team of technical and nontechnical representatives from numerous city, county, and State agencies. The group held monthly brainstorming sessions to determine how an LASMS should be structured and to develop an effective process for persuading local agencies to collaborate on incorporating transportation safety into their projects.

Safety Tools

The WSDOT LASMS has two primary components: a local SMS committee and an eight-step transportation safety decision-support process. The manual contains information on the tools and processes needed by local agencies to implement these two components, including a list of the positions that should be represented on the SMS committee, a description of steps involved in developing a comprehensive safety policy, and information on the data elements needed to identify high-collision locations.

"Most of these tools and processes already are in use and have been proven effective in many communities," says Sorensen. "However, most communities take a piecemeal or departmental approach, rather than a community approach, with each department or agency implementing its own processes and with some departments unknowingly performing the same tasks as others do."

The manual illustrates this departmental approach, compared to the community approach, in the following example: At a local high school, students departing the school frequently were involved in accidents due to a dangerous curve in a nearby road. The engineering and public works agencies' solution to the problem might be to install roadway safety devices such as guardrails near the curve to mitigate crash impacts. At the same time, the police might choose to place a patrol car near the dangerous curve to guide traffic. However, another effective--but overlooked--solution could be to include an extra lesson on this dangerous driving condition during the students' driver education course. Without an LASMS, educators probably would not be involved in identifying this solution.

If the community implements an LASMS, the various agencies would have the framework needed to bring them together to take a broader approach to solving transportation problems. The LASMS manual provides information on how to cooperate to implement the most effective solutions, using the community's shared resources. The manual also outlines various feedback mechanisms and performance measures that can be used to determine if problems are being solved effectively and efficiently.

The SMS Committee

One of the two primary components of any LASMS is the SMS committee, comprised of representatives from all of the local agencies within a community with an interest in transportation safety. The SMS committee serves as a standing, cross-disciplinary advisory council that meets regularly to identify transportation safety needs and issues; identify low-cost and no-cost safety resources to address safety needs; coordinate community and interagency partnerships; and assist in determining transportation safety policies, goals, and strategies.