Project Partners: Massachusetts Highway Department and Federal Highway Administration

One of the strategies in the Massachusetts Strategic Highway Safety Plan is to identify top lane departure locations and work at the local and regional levels to develop and implement location-specific strategies to mitigate the safety deficiencies. One of the efforts to address this strategy is the use of Road Safety Audits to examine selected locations.

As a component of this project, UMassSafe is facilitating RSA meetings, in the area of the selected site. The meetings are held with an RSA team comprised of representatives from federal, state, and local government as well as residents and other interested parties. These meetings cover the purpose of the RSA, expectations, roles and responsibilities, audit reports and contents. Specifically, UMassSafe asks the team to record their initial impressions of the roadway and begin to identify safety-related deficiencies. The team then employs available data (i.e., crash, volume, speed, etc.), field videos, and site experience to consider all safety issues associated with all road users and all possible road conditions (day and night, wet and dry, etc.). At this stage our role at UMassSafe is to lead the discussion, photographs area and takes notes on discussion.

Based on the information from the RSA, UMassSafe prepares an audit report that identifies safety issues and deficiencies, noting those that require immediate attention. The report includes conclusions, in the form of short and long-term recommendations, for possible corrective actions from the 4 Es (engineering, enforcement, education and EMS), where applicable. This process is scheduled to be repeated at 20 locations throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

For more information on the Massachusetts Strategic Highway Safety Plan, visit http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=content/traffic/shsp&sid=level2