In 2022, 19 percent of the US population lived in rural areas but rural road fatalities accounted for 41 percent of all fatalities. Even with reductions in the number of fatalities on the roadways, fatality rate in rural areas is 1.5 times higher than the fatality rate in urban areas.

Addressing safety on local and rural roads presents several challenges including: 1) Safety issues are often random on local and rural roads; 2) Strategies to address local and rural road safety are diverse and draws from several safety areas. This page provides important information to assist in preventing and reducing the severity of crashes on local and rural roads in comprehensible formats.