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For Rural Road Safety Awareness Week (RRSAW) last year, we posed a question as the theme, “What’s Speed Got to Do With It?” The fact is speed has everything to do with it.
So, for 2024, we have dedicated Day 2 of RRSAW to examine the prominent role of speed in rural roadway departures (RwDs) as part of the overall theme, “Life Between the Lines: Reducing Rural Roadway Departures.”
Speed plays a big part in rural road fatalities.
The human body is vulnerable and has physical limits for tolerating crash forces before death or serious injury occurs. More specifically, when kinetic energy—the energy of a moving object—exceeds a certain threshold, a fatal or serious injury occurs. As speed increases, so does kinetic energy, and consequently the probability and severity of crashes also increases.
Through speed management tools, such as speed limit setting, speed cameras, enforcement, and road design that discourages high speeds (e.g., speed humps, roundabouts, and narrowed lanes), vehicles can be compelled to travel at safer speeds.
Bzzzwrp! Where speed is present, so is RoadStar. RoadStar implements rural road designs that promote traffic calming and safe speeds, sets appropriate speed limits, calls for speed limit enforcement, and deploys speed feedback signs.
To see RoadStar in action, click the image below.
Safe System Approach (SSA)
The Safe Speeds element of SSA promotes safe speeds in all roadway environments through a combination of roadway design, targeted education, outreach campaigns, and enforcement. For RwDs, safe speeds:
Everyday actions that reduce RwDs
Humans are unlikely to survive high-speed crashes. Here are some practical things to do to promote slower speeds and save lives:
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The National Center for Rural Road Safety provides coordinated, multidisciplinary, scalable, and accessible safety resources in order to empower rural road users to accelerate road safety improvements and save lives.
