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Examining Rural Traffic Safety Culture: An Appalachia Case Study

October 2020 Webinar

Availability Status: Archived

Description/Learning Outcomes:

The National Center for Rural Road Safety (Rural Safety Center) hosted a FREE, 1.5-hour online webinar. 

Webinar Description

This webinar featured a review of a recently completed project examining traffic safety in the Appalachian Region. Dr. Wes Kumfer discussed unique traffic safety characteristics that exists in the Appalachian Region, linked these statistics to rural road safety, and discussed potential measures to address safety concerns while highlighting bright spots in Appalachia’s traffic safety profile. Dr. Kumfer concluded the webinar by illustrating what the safety data tells us about safety culture in the Region and pointed to next steps needed to understand rural traffic safety culture. 

Webinar Outcomes
At the conclusion of this webinar, participants were able to:

  • Identify potential risks to rural road safety as identified in the literature.
  • Characterize the traffic safety profile of the Appalachian Region using crash data.
  • Describe engineering methods used to improve safety and how to evaluate those methods.
  • Characterize rural road traffic safety culture using crash data.

Target Audience
This training was directed towards a very broad safety audience including, but not limited to, law enforcement, planners, engineers, first responders, elected officials, public health, tourism agencies, and safety culture experts. 

Course Presenters

  • Wes Kumfer, PhD, RSP1, Engineering Research Associate, UNC Highway Safety Research Center
    Dr. Wes Kumfer joined HSRC in 2017 as a postdoctoral research associate with a focus on crash analysis and safety education. His primary research interest is traffic safety management through a system-oriented approach. While at HSRC, Dr. Kumfer has worked on pedestrian crash modeling, Safe Systems implementation, and engineering evaluation. He uses this experience as a member of the Road to Zero Safe System and Traffic Safety Culture working groups and as the research manager of the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety.