Kevin Elliott 0:05 Welcome to home safely, a podcast from the National Center for rural road safety. Hi everyone. I'm Kevin Elliot. I'm your host on the podcast, and I'm the marketing manager for the National Center for rural road safety. Each episode on our podcast will bring you stories, strategies and solutions that are helping communities across the country make their roads safer for everyone, whether you're behind the wheel, designing the road, or just a community member, we're all working together out there to get everyone home safely. Enjoy the episode. Hey everybody. This is Kevin Elliott. I'm the marketing manager for the National Center for rural road safety, and I am here today with someone who is pretty unique in our field, in rural and tribal roadway safety. Carrie Brown is the director of the Western Tribal Technical Assistance Program. She's also the director of the Nevada local technical assistance program, the LTAP. I told you, she was impressive and has a lot of jobs. And so we wanted to bring Carrie on today to talk about some of the unique challenges out there in the desert, but also, too, with tribal nations, we want to make sure that they have the safest roads possible as well. So welcome to the podcast, Carrie. Carrie Brown 1:17 Well, thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here. Kevin Elliott 1:21 Sure thing I tell you what, why don't we start at the top? Because, again, you have these, these two big jobs that are separate, but they also overlap. So if you just start at the beginning and tell us, what are some of the challenges, the road safety challenges you see in the rural and tribal areas in Nevada? Carrie Brown 1:39 Oh, absolutely. So clearly, one of the biggest challenges we have is being very remote. And so with that, you know, it's very challenging to make sure that all of the dollars that we have available to us stretch as far as they can because of such the large geographical distances it does make delivering training somewhat difficult. One of the big ones is, is because our locations, both in Nevada and in Indian country, are so remote, a lot of times, we don't have access to reliable internet or even cell phone coverage. And so this makes it not only, you know, dangerous for us, because, you know, if something were to happen on the roadway and we were involved in a crash, and it's going to take first responders a long time to not only be notified that we need assistance, that we need help, but that, you know where we are, it takes them a long time to get there. So a lot of times, we're not receiving the medical assistance that we require within that golden hour. Additionally, because we have such limited resources with technology, it makes delivering online courses just as difficult, especially if our remote communities in Nevada and in Indian country don't have reliable internet. So even just trying to overcome the geographical distance by hosting virtual training, sometimes can be challenging as well. Some of the other things that we also experience that may be somewhat unique to our areas is very extreme weather. We were actually just talking about this casually before the podcast began. You know, in Arizona and Nevada, we have very extreme weather being in high desert. So in the summer it's very, very hot, and in the winter it gets very, very cold. So we experience extremes, and that really plays out in the quality of our roadways, as well as, you know, the integrity of our infrastructures to our communities. Kevin Elliott 3:44 I know, like in most states, in rural areas, those crashes, those fatal crashes, account for at least 40% sometimes half. I've heard states as high as 70 and 80%. Is that a similar case in Nevada? Carrie Brown 3:58 Absolutely. And we also have to take into account some of the things that Nevada is famous for. So one of those things is gaming. You know, we make a lot of our income at the state level through tourism. This carries its own kind of hodgepodge of challenges. One of the big ones that I'm I see right now happening in Nevada is Burning Man. So Burning Man is coming through. In order to access the Black Rock Desert, they must travel through Pyramid Lake reservation, which is very remote. It's a two lane highway. It can be very dangerous, and unfortunately because a lot of our guests that come for Burning Man are unfamiliar with our terrain and our roadways, as well as maybe they have never actually passed other vehicles on a two lane roadway, and so they really don't have this unfortunately, they don't have the skill level that it takes to safely pass a vehicle in front of them on a two lane highway. Up until about two years. Go our state law in with respect to occupant protection safety was very lax, and it still remains lax, but one of the things that we were seeing was a big discrepancy in between the state law for car seat usage versus what the best practices were, and a big part of that is because we didn't want to detour or discourage families from visiting Nevada for, you know, vacations. But what we were seeing is, you know, a large influx in child injury and fatality just because, you know, there was such a large discrepancy. So previously, the law was six and 60 pounds in order to keep your child in a car seat or a booster seat in Nevada, after they reached both of those, they could legally ride in a back seat with just a seat belt, and as a child passenger technician and someone who is very passionate about occupant protection safety, this was very alarming for me. Fortunately, we did have some great advocacy at the local level to strengthen that law. The best practice is to keep your child in a booster seat until they are four nine and 80 pounds previously, though, with the law being at six and 60 pounds, it was making it easier for families to come tour and vacation here, because they weren't having to pack a car seat when they were traveling. However, like I said, we noted that that is not the best practice and is very dangerous, so that law has been changed. However, we still have a lot of work to do in that arena. Kevin Elliott 6:32 So, yeah, that's an interesting insight. Tourism drives, literally drives people that just aren't familiar with the roads at all right? They may have never been there in in their lives. I would imagine the ADT on those roads goes way up, you know, like during Burning Man, you have a road that probably doesn't have a lot of traffic, and then all of a sudden it has all the traffic which, which probably causes problems out there, too. Carrie Brown 6:56 Yes, absolutely, you know, you stated it perfectly, generally, the highways out at Pyramid Lake, you know, while they, you know, do have a pretty decent traffic volume, it's nowhere near the amount of traffic that we see during Burning Man. So we go from having maybe 5000 drivers on the roadways to 60,000 just in a week span. Additionally, in Nevada, you know, we have other festivals and activities that bring people to our state. You know, we have a hot air balloon race that's coming up. We also have air races because we do have some military bases around the area. And you know, additionally, we also have other things that are going on in Reno and in Las Vegas, like street vibrations, the Hot August Nights and the rib cook off that's actually going on right now. And, you know, my tribe even itself, we're having a powwow this weekend. So that also brings in a huge influx of activity and traffic to our area, it can be very challenging, especially with our remoteness, to be able to provide services in times of need, especially like emergency services. I know, listening to some of the previous podcasts that the National Center for rural safety has put on with crystal. You know, she hit the nail on the head with how critical that hour is, and what we can do to help mitigate some of the catastrophes that can happen on our road, on our roadways, just in general, trying to improve our transportation infrastructure for tribes as well as rural Nevada, so that we can access services more readily. Kevin Elliott 8:41 That's a great segue, and one of the reasons we wanted to have you on because you cover multiple areas in this field, in this industry, you're an L tap director, and we talk about the LTPs a lot on this show, because they're such great partners of ours. In every state, we always want to plug the local technical assistance programs. If you if you haven't talked to your L tap, then they do, because they're wonderful, and literally, their job is to just help train people on this stuff, but also to you, because you're the director of the Nevada, I mean, excuse me, the director of the Western Tribal Technical Assistance Program, but also a member of the of a tribe. Yourself, that personal experience and your expertise, I would love to talk about that a little bit, because we talk a lot about at the center, how rural is different than urban and frontier. Rural is different than rural. And tell me what's a little bit different in these tribal cultures, in the tribal areas when it comes to roadway safety, absolutely. Carrie Brown 9:37 So some of the challenges that we experience is even just jurisdiction. There is often confusion about who owns the roadway and or maybe a state a roadway leads into a tribal land, and a state is like, well, we are not responsible for that roadway, even if it's a state roadway, so they may stop providing. Maintenance up until that state route goes into tribal land, even, and the tribe doesn't own the road, so they can't perform the maintenance. When, instead of looking at transportation as we can do this, but we need to look more at it as we can do this, and we could do this together that can create a lot of challenges in itself, just the jurisdiction, and then also tribal nations are in a very unique situation, because we are sovereign nations, so we're kind of like a state within a state. And as a direct result of that, tribal treaties with the federal government, we have a direct government to government relationship with the feds. So a lot of times when you know we are experiencing emergency declarations, we have to effectively, kind of fend for ourselves, because we unless we already have an existing MOU with the state or the county or the surrounding jurisdictions, we're kind of on our own, which can be an advantage, but it can also be a hindrance as well. So because we're on our own, you know, we can't, we don't. And look like I said, unless we have an existing MOU or an agreement with our surrounding jurisdictions, we cannot ask them for assistance. We cannot ask them for aid. And anyone who works with tribes closely knows that tribes have very limited resources, and I understand that there is a large misconception out there with non tribal agencies that view tribes as having access to a lot of resources because maybe a handful of art of tribal nations have casinos or have very advanced and developed economic development structures. But that is not true for the majority of tribes, and so a lot of times, you know, other agencies or surrounding partners may back away from working with tribes with that misconception that we can do it on our own, which in reality, we have often made it work over the years. However, we can't do it by ourselves. We do need partnerships. We do need to work together. And then, on the positive side, though, with having that direct government to government relationship with the feds, we can go directly to the federal government to seek assistance in the event of an amount of an emergency disaster or declaration of that kind. So for example, a tribe that I worked with, you know, during the onset of covid, hand sanitizer, gloves, masks, were very hard to come by, especially at the local level. So the tribe could actually go directly to the federal government, to the CDC, and ask them directly for those resources. And, you know, they came through and provided that tribe with 10,000 masks with, you know, copious amounts of gloves and sanitizer and the things that we needed in order to mitigate the spread. However, surrounding jurisdictions like Washoe County, the City of Reno, City of Henderson didn't have a standing MOU with us. You know, they had to go through asking the city, asking the county, and then asking the state, and then go into the federal government to ask for those resources. Whether, if they had had a MOU or a good working relationship with their local tribes, they could have easily gone to the tribe and said, Hey, we understand that you recently got some resources from the federal government. Would you mind sharing that with us? And tribes are usually open and willing to do that, but we have to have those partnerships, and we have to have those relationships in place first. Kevin Elliott 13:37 That's super interesting, I tell you what, we're going to take a quick little break right now, and then we will come right back with Carrie Brown from the Western Tribal Technical Assistance Program and the Nevada local technical assistance program. Kevin Elliott 13:57 You might be listening to this podcast, but maybe you aren't familiar with the National Center for rural road safety. We're a Federal Highway Administration National Center for Excellence dedicated exclusively to saving lives on rural roads. We offer free training and technical assistance, monthly webinars and other content, all customized to life in rural communities. We are a national hub that equips local agencies, first responders and communities with the tools they need to make rural travel safer, because we can't achieve zero deaths on America's roadways without addressing rural roadways together, we can make sure everyone gets home safely. Learn more at rural safety center.org. Kevin Elliott 14:45 All right, everybody, I'm back here with Carrie Brown, and we're talking about the differences and similarities and the challenges and solutions for rural roads in Nevada, but also tribal roads. So Carrie, first of all, tell everybody, like, what? What tribe you're part of, but then also, too some of the cultural differences and similarities that you that might come to bear when you're talking about sharing resources or getting roadway safety stuff done on tribal land. Carrie Brown 15:14 So I am a member of the Reno Sparks Indian colony. So I am Northern Paiute. So how much Carrie Brown, me Anya, but I also have tribal affiliations with Pyramid Lake as well as the Klamath tribes of Oregon. Kind of a hodgepodge, but yes, I am a proud enrolled member of the Reno Sparks Indian colony. Our particular tribe actually represents three separate tribes of the Paiutes, washoes and shoshones. Just a brief tribal history from us is during When settlers were coming into Nevada, they were just placing a lot of the tribes in the area. Basically bands from those three tribes were camping at the river that runs through Reno, which is the Truckee River, and at that time, it was considered the outskirts of Reno. But as Reno grew, it grew around where the camp was. And so as Reno grew in the 1930s my tribe decided, hey, let's petition for federal recognition, and they got it. Now you will see the present day colony in the middle of Reno, and then we also have another residential area that is located about 20 miles outside of Reno that is in a very rural area. We have about 1900 acres out in the Nevada desert, so we have had to essentially start from the very bottom in building infrastructure to be able to support homes in that area, culturally that are unique to tribal nations. One is that we are extremely tight knit, whether that be for better or for worse, we it's, I always tell folks, you know, being from a tribe is kind of like lightweight being famous, because everybody knows you, everyone knows your family. It's a it can be a really beautiful thing to because you have that tight connection with people in your community. However, sometimes it can be a little rocky, too. Mostly just, you know, the rumor mill and moccasin telegraph can be a little inaccurate at times, overall, that I always look at that as a protective factor for tribes is because we are very tight knit and we share, you know, certain values, however, that can be very different from our neighbors and friends that are from non tribal nations. So an example of this that I that always comes to my mind is during covid We my tribal nation with our health center, we were attempting to enter into an MOU with the local hospital, which is renown here in the Reno area. And one of the reasons we wanted to do that is because they're our neighbors. The renown is literally a block away from our health center. So we share a lot of the same patients in the MOU. The one thing that really stood out to me was the way in which we prioritize patients. So with tribal nations, we place a very high respect and priority on our elders and on our children. So when we have natural disasters, when we have declarations of emergency, most of our resources, or a lot of our resources, I should say, not most, but a lot of our resources, go to protecting our elders to protecting our children. If we had a huge, you know, a mass casual casualty incident, it wouldn't be our medical personnel running to folks who are able bodied, basically in that middle area where you're from adolescence up until middle age, they would kind of be our last priority, because we place such a high priority on our elders and our children, but that is almost in direct opposition to what the priority tiers would be for Washoe County or for REMSA. They're wanting to provide those services to folks who are closer to working age, people that contribute more to society, which I completely understand from an economic standpoint, but because those were indirect oppositions, that was something that we really needed to hammer out with Washoe County and with Renown, was that if we are going to band together in the event of a large mass casualty incident, this is how we prioritize our patients, can We come to some kind of agreement or some kind of compromise, if you will, on how we're going to distribute and use our resources? So that would that is definitely one way in which we're very different culturally, is just who we prioritize when we're trying to save lives and who we're trying to provide the most support and protection for and I always tell people in with tribal nations, we honor our people by keeping them safe. Kevin Elliott 19:49 So going from there to like, tribal roadway safety understanding that that's part of your culture. How does that? How does, how does that fold over culturally with, say, road. Roadway safety and the culture of roadway safety and tribal lands, or at least the ones that you're familiar with. Carrie Brown 20:05 Sure. So one of the things that you know we at t tap, and through the previous iterations of t tap, one of the things that we've really tried to advocate for, at least at the tribal level, is for changes in policy, changes in their law and order code, because tribes are sovereign nations, they have their own law and order code. Many times. They have their own police force. They have their own courts. So as a direct result, many tribal nations don't have anything on their law books that address occupant protection. They don't address seat belts. They don't address car seats. And if they do, it's very generalized and very minimal. And so, you know, we work with tribes to advocate for those policy changes. And actually the safe systems approach, that system approach, really interweaves well with tribal nations, because tribal nations, we tend to view our world perspective in a more holistic way, and that we're all connected and everything has an element that plays a part in whatever field that you're in. And so the safe systems approach really mirrors that, but it does interweave very nicely into tribal nations. Kevin Elliott 21:19 That's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up culturally speaking, the safe system approach, for those who don't know it is, it is a multi disciplinary kind of holistic way to think about the roadways. It's taking care of each other. So it starts with the premise that people are going to make mistakes, as opposed to the traditional idea of like, well, people should just be better. They should just drive better and be safer and all that. Then they should, by the way, of course they should. But if the entire system, the safety of the system, is relying on humans making, not making, mistakes, well we're going to be in trouble. And so the safe system approach starts with that, and says, Okay, how do we build a system around that? So assuming if they make a mistake, that mistake is not fatal, I think that's a beautiful tie in to what you're kind of, what you're describing with the tribal cultures you're a part of. And that you know about is that taking care of each other is a core value. Taking care of all ages. Carrie Brown 22:11 Yes, absolutely. I mean, even in the way that we rear children is very similar in that we expect our children to make mistakes. You know, we expect our children to not always know what to do, but in that instance, because we look at it, and especially child rearing in a holistic fashion, just like what you were saying with making mistakes on the roadways, is that with safe systems approach, there is other facets to the system that will support even, even if a human makes a human mistake. And so there's a fallback, and there's a protect the you know, there's other layers of protection. So when we're rearing children and they make a mistake, you know, they have different systems to rely on. They you know, obviously the first line of approach is their parents, and then they have their grandparents, and then their aunties and their uncles and their first cousins that we actually at a tribal level, we view as our brothers and sisters, and so those are very similar to me in my view of the safe systems approach, because, you know, if we make a mistake as a driver on the roadway, there's other facets within the system that kind of step up to provide that protection so that that one mistake or the bad call or whatever is not fatal. Kevin Elliott 23:30 That's great. That's a great way to say that. And I tell you, it's easy to in the in rural areas. Those of us who work in the you know, rural and tribal. In your case, work in these areas, it's easy to see the challenges out there and see how much work is left to be done in these areas, and forget that there are also some really cool, innovative, new things that are coming out of these areas. And you have a couple that that you mentioned to us. One in particular, build a better mouse trap program. It's a federal program that the Yakima Nation won one so tell us what that's all about. Carrie Brown 24:08 Within the LTAP and the office of local aid support, every year we have a competition for build a better mouse trap and this is where we, you know, try to get some of our local and tribal agencies to share some of their innovative ideas when working on roadways and an infrastructure, and share those and really give and celebrate them. I think that's the important part. Is we really need to celebrate these innovations and these advancements. So the Confederated Tribes and bands of the Yakama Nation won the build a better mousetrap award in 2023 their project was an innovative mobile unit sensing traffic device. So I believe the acronym that they're using for that is must, and this system uses advanced sensors on utility poles throughout the reservation to monitor. Traffic so they're actually getting more accurate. Traffic counts vehicle miles traveled. It also detects dangerous events and the and it sends real time warning messages, which is revolutionary, especially on rural roads that have very limited resources and infrastructure. And this system that they put into place has helped them improve traffic planning, their roadway safety, and it also provides crucial data for decision making. Kevin Elliott 25:29 That's a great point, yeah, and a really encouraging, innovative way to think about this is specifically customized for these, these tribal areas. I'll tell you what. Let's take one more break, and then we'll come back with Carrie Brown for our last segment. Have you heard of the Road Safety Champion Program? It's our signature training course here at the National Center for rural road safety. It's like a safety 101, course for everyone in your agency. It's free, flexible and designed for workers at all levels, in public works, EMS, law enforcement, planning and engineering, you name it, through this national certificate program, you'll gain the tools and knowledge to make your community safer, and you'll earn the title of road safety champion. Along the way, everyone can help make rural roads safer. We want to equip you with the basic knowledge you need. Start your training today at rural safety center.org and be the reason someone gets home safely. All right, I'm back with Carrie Brown from the Western Tribal Technical Assistance Program and the Nevada local technical assistance program. And we were talking about the unique conditions of roadways and roadway safety and culture and all kind of neat things in tribal lands, specifically the ones that Carrie is a member of and works with. And we were talking about data and the availability of data, making data driven decisions when it comes to roadway safety and the challenges of data in these areas, because a lot of times funding is tied to you showing, you know, connecting the dots with data. Carrie Brown 27:11 Yeah, absolutely. So yes, data, getting data on tribal lands, has always been a huge challenge, and that's a challenge for a couple of reasons. One, you know, if we're looking at Fars data, a lot of times when we have states that have a high Native American population and a concurrent high Hispanic population, in the event that you know we they're collecting data from vital records, many times Native Americans are misclassified. So you know, our data points within Fars are skewed because we may have, you know, a certain amount of tribal people who unfortunately have perished on roadways, but they were classified as Hispanic, so we're basically missing from those data sets. Additionally, many states have a state database in which you can input crash data. Well, a lot of times again, tribes are omitted from this database, so we don't have access to viable data to be able to apply for funding. So being able to find other sources of data has always been a challenge, but I feel that if we are somewhat creative with that, that is something that we can definitely overcome. The Office of Tribal transportation specifically with Adam Larson, he provides a grant program in which tribes can apply for and improve their data collection, as well as do some tribal transportation planning. So there is set aside funding specifically for tribes with that. In addition, Adam's office has also launched a crash data database for tribes to use. Should they so choose other challenges that tribes have when we are trying to go after grant funds is match requirements and or funds that are contingent on reimbursement. Many tribes, their communities, live below the poverty level, so they don't have access or readily access to these things. So if you're applying for funding, you know and the funding requirement is on reimbursement that may not work for that tribe, because they actually don't have the capital to put up to purchase the things they need to get this program off the ground and then wait for reimbursement. Another challenge that we have is match. Again, many tribes are not economically advanced, and they don't have access to those monetary resources to be able to put up the 20% match, so also trying to find creative ways in which we can meet match and still be able to access those that funding and those resources can be challenging for us. Kevin Elliott 29:57 Well, this is all fantastic information. Carrie. It is a challenging world out there. It's wonderful to these rural areas. Most of the nation's roadways are out in spaces like this. And like you, you've told us, even those who don't live in rural areas, usually vacation in rural areas or go to a festival or something like that. And so this is a this, this, and the challenges on tribal roadways are a are a problem and an opportunity. They affect all of us, one way or the other. And so we appreciate people like you out there in these very remote places, sometimes, trying to get people home safely, trying to do this very meaningful but very difficult work. And we really appreciate you coming on today. Anything else I haven't asked you about that you think is important before we go. Carrie Brown 30:45 I would really like to dedicate this podcast to Joe and Kelly Myers. They really gave me my passion and start in tribal transportation. Unfortunately, they are not with us any longer, and something happens every day that I wish I could tell them about, but I'm so thankful that I was able to meet these amazing individuals and be able to start my career in tribal transportation. So thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed this. Kevin Elliott 31:12 Very good thank you so much for your time, Carrie, thanks for bringing your expertise, your subject matter expertise on this and your and just your cultural background and your personal lived experience is super valuable, just as informative as we hoped it would be. And thank you for coming on and helping get people home safely. Thanks for riding along with us on home safely. If you like this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who care about making rural roads safer for more resources training or upcoming events, visit us at rural safety center.org and until next time, stay safe. Stay connected, and let's all get home safely. Foreign.