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Page 75
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Safe System Planning Practices." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29147.
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APPENDIX B

Safe System Planning Practices

Appendix B provides data on how respondents appraised various Safe System planning practices. See Table B-1 for scores related to each practice’s feasibility and impact.

Interpretive categorization of Z-scores (Feasibility and Impact columns), with a mean of zero (0) and standard deviation of one (1).

Categories Z-scores
High > 1 SD above mean
Moderate < 1 and > 0
Low > −1 and < 0
Very Low < −1 SD below mean

Note: SD = standard deviation round the mean score of zero (0).

Page 76
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Safe System Planning Practices." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29147.
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Table B-1. Planning practice feasibility and impact scores (n = 60).

Practice Feasibility Impact Category
Incorporating road safety audits in project scoping/planning phases. 0.724 0.302 Moderate Feasibility/Moderate Impact
Prioritizing injury risk-based (systemic) safety assessments over crash “hot spot” or “black spot” approaches. 0.225 0.417 Moderate Feasibility/Moderate Impact
Communicating with communities previously not involved in decision-making to learn about their safety issues and concerns on a routine basis (annually, quarterly). 0.402 0.225 Moderate Feasibility/Moderate Impact
Coordinating with land-use planners to align land use and roadway purposes (e.g., deciding whether the road’s purpose is access- or mobility-centered). 0.052 0.257 Moderate Feasibility/Moderate Impact
Simulating the safety effects of land developments and investments in long-range plans. −0.233 −0.019 Low Feasibility/Low Impact
Incorporating nontraditional transportation safety data sources [e.g., emergency medical services, hospital, social determinants of health, environmental, and historical (e.g., redlining)] as part of problem identification and project prioritization processes. −0.307 −0.012 Low Feasibility/Low Impact
Implementing or expanding car-free zones in areas with high pedestrian activity. −0.702 0.370 Low Feasibility/Moderate Impact
Setting a goal to reduce road deaths by 50% by 2030 in safety plans. 0.071 −0.532 Moderate Feasibility/Low Impact
Replacing travel forecasting (“predict and provide”) with backcasting (“decide and provide,” i.e., starting from a vision of desirable travel patterns and working backward to realize the vision). −0.294 −0.257 Low Feasibility/Low Impact
Encouraging and facilitating public use of self-reporting (via mobile app or survey) to capture collisions and other events falling outside the scope of traditional crash reporting (e.g., near misses, pedestrian and bicyclist falls). 0.062 −0.751 Moderate Feasibility/Low Impact
Page 75
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Safe System Planning Practices." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29147.
×
Page 75
Page 76
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Safe System Planning Practices." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29147.
×
Page 76
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The Safe System approach is a holistic approach that provides a framework for making the U.S. national transportation system safer. It is based on building and reinforcing multiple layers of protection to prevent crashes from happening and minimize the harm caused when crashes occur. This safety approach differs from conventional ones because it focuses on human vulnerability and creates a system with many redundancies to protect all transportation users.

NCHRP Research Report 1135: A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, presents information for applying the Safe System approach among state departments of transportation and other transportation agencies.

Supplemental to the report is NCHRP Web-Only Document 413: Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations.

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