Kevin Elliott 0:00 Hi everyone. I'm Kevin Elliott. 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. I am here with the one and only Nick Parr, a friend of mine and a good guy and a champion for rural road safety. He is the director of highways for Boone County, Indiana, and it gets rural really, really fast. I met Nick several years ago when we were doing a video project, and he was he was great and really well spoken, and you could tell he had a passion for roadway safety, and he's since been promoted to the director of highways, and we've so we wanted to have him on because Nick has a great perspective as a person at the county level, at the real level, where, literally, where the rubber meets the road and facing the challenges of working in rural communities, working on rural roads and making them safer. Introduce yourself a little bit to the crowd. How did you end up in this job? Nick Parr 1:31 I ended up working at the County Highway Department for just had a background in various different construction roles. Started here almost 20 years ago, doing you know, working in the working out on the roads, working with different crews, and worked my way up through different opportunities to lead the crews and then now to lead the entire department. Kevin Elliott 1:53 You have been at multiple levels in a county agency, so you have these perspectives. This wasn't like you came into the job as director of highways. You've worked your way through. You've seen everything, and so it gives you a unique perspective on the real challenges of road safety in rural areas. So if you would tell them your makeup like urban versus rural versus what's it like out there? Nick Parr 2:16 Technically, Indianapolis doesn't stretch all the way into Boone County, but we are one of the, what they call the donut counties. Our border touches the county that contains Indianapolis, but it's continued to grow to the north and west, which is where we're located from Indianapolis, kind of in between Indianapolis and Lafayette, two major cities. We're about halfway in between is where our office is. But as the urbanized area continues to grow. It also impacts the rural areas. I think we gained from the census in 2010 from about 58,000 people in our county to about 80,000 people in our county in 2020 so we're one of the fastest growing counties definitely in the state. Kevin Elliott 2:56 A decent part of your county is rural? Nick Parr 2:59 We have about 300 miles of gravel road still of our 720 miles. 20 miles, centerline miles that we take care of. And it's almost like having two different, you know, two different counties in the same county. We have a very urbanized area, and then we have very rural agricultural areas still in the county that are very sparsely populated. Kevin Elliott 3:17 That's a good way to say that it's like two counties in the county, and that's one of the big insights when you work with rural communities, or work with rural agencies, or agencies that deal with rural roads, is it really is a different it is so different in the rural areas versus the urban that it's almost like having another county. Tell me some of the ways that it's different in the rural areas versus your urban ones. Nick Parr 3:42 So a lot of our roads, you know, the entire county was very rural, and as it's become more urbanized in the cities and towns, still, the fringe area might be extremely rural. The traffic increases substantially around the cities and towns, but the roads don't necessarily evolve or grow and change at the same rate as the streets that are in the cities and towns. So once a user of a road, roadway that's in in a city or of a town gets into the rural area, it's much different. It is a much different experience for the our staff working on the roadways, the people that use the roadways, from the cyclists to the pedestrians and the cars, as well as the agriculture traffic. It's a it's a major change in driver behavior. It's really, it's, it's night and day different. It's, it's just completely different experience driving in the cities and towns and immediately going to a rural area. Kevin Elliott 4:36 And so if Boone County is like most other areas like that, where you have these transitions from rural or urban to rural or back and forth. One speeds change, because the roads tend to stretch out, like I've done that. Drive multiple times from the Indianapolis Airport up to Lafayette, where Purdue University is, and so you can, you know, you leave Indy right you're right there, and then you drive through this very rural area, and it's just, it's just beautiful American. It's. Farmland, but it's easier to go faster out there. Like you said, you have a lot of agriculture out there, lots and lots of farms and farm houses and things like that. And so you typically have these conflicts where some cars are going faster and some cars are going a lot slower, and the roads are different. Is that a fair assessment? Nick Parr 5:16 Yeah, it's a fair assessment. There's the big challenge is when it's actually kind of two different times a year as the crops are up, you get this sense of, you know, the security of the crops are tall and, you know, you could just be, you could be driving for miles and not experience another motorist. But they does tend to have people drive faster, long, straight, flat, wide, open roads. And then later in the years, when there's no crops on the road, you can see oncoming traffic at a rural intersection that maybe you couldn't see when the crops were taller. So it changes driver behavior. But you know, individuals that aren't used to that, that aren't accustomed to encountering other vehicles that may be driving much faster than the typically the road conditions would allow it can surprise users of the roadways that aren't used to that. Kevin Elliott 6:05 So not only do you have rural roads and rural systems that are different than urban even the rural roads in different times of the year are different systems, because if you have a corn Cropper or something, and it blocks an intersection. You know, that's an What an interesting insight, and how, even in the rural areas, it can change over time. Talk about the role of speed out there. Nick Parr 6:33 Controlling driver behavior is challenging to do. People drive the speed they feel comfortable at. Many of our roads maybe Posted at A 40 miles an hour speed limit, we'll find a lot of motorists traveling much faster than that when you can see for more than a mile in front of you and the road is flat and straight. We don't have a lot of great elevation changes throughout our county. You run into the challenge when you got fast comfortable using these rural roads, and then we have an intersection that many people feel like is a four way stop, or should be a four way stop, or disregard the stop sign, because they've driven so far without having to stop that it just becomes something that they look past. And that's where we have our major conflicts as intersections like that in the rural area. Kevin Elliott 7:24 We'll be right back with more from Nick Parr. Stay with us. Kevin Elliott 7:31 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. Kevin Elliott 8:14 We're back with Nick Parr. Nick, what are some of the most common severe crash types you all have in Boone County? Nick Parr 8:20 The severe crash types the most crashes we get is Lane departures, by far, whether that's leaving the side of the roadway, avoiding an animal, avoiding another car, but the most severe crash type of injury or fatality is at intersections. Easily. That's where we almost always have our fatalities. We average about one per year on our network, and they're very frequently at an intersection. And like I mentioned, either they think it's a four way stop, so they pull up, stop and then proceed through the intersection, or don't stop. And we typically see these crashes in the seasons where the crops are up or there is blocked visibility, and the motorist that has the right of way doesn't realize there's another motorist at the intersection. If they can see them, and they see they start to take off, that's where they know, okay, I can prepare. And we don't have that same flexibility when the crops are up or vegetation is on the trees, blocking the visibility of the of the car waiting at another intersection. Kevin Elliott 9:27 What are some ways you all are trying to mitigate that? Nick Parr 9:30 We do a lot of different things, controlling speeds, I think is probably the most challenging on its driver comfort. So you don't want to make the drivers uncomfortable with narrow lanes or narrow roads, then you have to have the agriculture equipment still be able to make it through. We don't have ride wide right of ways where we can add additional shoulders. There's not a lot of width available. What we've done and found success, or, I think we're finding success these intersections where we know we have problems, where we see. Intersections with similar characteristics as intersections where we're having problems, we're adding additional pavement markings, adding stop ahead written on the pavement, adding stop bars, adding additional stop signs, spin alerts on top of signs, adding stop ahead signs where they're not necessarily warranted, but trying to get those motorist attention that something is different, the cross traffic does not stop signs on the on the bottom of those two way stops. We've also gone after a lot more federal dollars using our local road safety plan that we got implemented in 2020 and we've been able to secure Highway Safety Improvement funds for adding pavement markings where they don't currently exist, that send that the intent there is to help with the lane departure crashes. So you a lot of our rural roads don't meet the threshold to require pavement markings, so white lines on the edge and the yellow lines in the middle. So we can add those, but it comes at a pretty good expense. So we saw federal dollars that will cover 90% of our costs on the project. We just we did that a couple years ago. We just recently let the project. We haven't actually got the pavement markings applied yet. And then we also saw funding for replacing signs so retro reflectivity on signs fades over time, where you can't see them as good in the dark, and that's an effort to try to get the driver's attention. Get the motorist attention that there's a hazard or that there's something that they should be prepared for, whether it's a curve or a hill or an object. Marker that also included stop and yield signs and speed limit signs, we were able to get replaced. That project was also funded with 90% federal dollars, so that is wrapping up right now. So we anticipate to see a benefit of the that project to hopefully reduce our lane departure crashes with the pavement markings. We anticipate, you know, hopefully, seeing the lane departures as well as the intersection crashes where there's, you know, a reduction of, or reduce the severity of those crashes. We have done roundabout projects. We've implemented, getting a roundabout constructed at one intersection that had multiple fatalities. We were able to use safety improvement funds for that project. Also it goes to letting in February, so likely get built next year. In the short term, we were able to add four way stop and always stop was warranted, and added all the pavement markings that we talked about to try to get driver attention, and what it's done that's helped reduce the risk and the severity, but we still have near misses and possible crashes at those intersections, or at that intersection due to the driver. You know, drivers on one road are driving for maybe two or three miles, and they don't see a stop sign, and that one just surprises them when they get there. Kevin Elliott 13:03 That was a great answer. There's a lot in there that I want to that I want to pull out and tease out for others, because I think there's some great lessons learned, or lessons other people can do. And tips. You talk about intersections specifically, but looking around your system. You know the types of intersections where they are risky. It's the ones that are have a long lead up. There's not a lot of stop signs around crops might be tall at a certain time of year. And then looking around your system for other intersections that have those same characteristics, and trying to treat multiple intersections at the same time, which is the definition of the systemic approach. Do you all is that kind of a common practice with that in Boone County, where you say, Okay, we have a problem here, and these, this looks like a lot of other locations that we might have. Let's go out and try and fix them before a crash happens. Nick Parr 13:58 It's a common practice. Now, we learned this during our local road safety plan, we had the opportunity to work with federal highway. We were on the initial local public agencies to be able to participate in that. And it was an eye opening experience going through that, and not just looking at where do you have the crash, but what we've been able to see now, not only is this intersection look similar, but we're seeing development or additional motorists using this roadway, and we can see the traffic counts increase similar to what they did at the other intersections. And we're able to highlight that issue, try to bring attention to it before it becomes crashes. To implement an always stop does take specific criteria with traffic counts blocked visibility or a number of injury crashes over a period of time, so we don't want to wait in. Tell those issues exist, if we can prevent them prior to there being crashes, would be the desire. So bringing that you know, realizing that this is occurring at this intersection, and you can maybe see some near misses or here's some calls, there's some issues. We can start addressing those much quicker, and we'll never know exactly how many crashes we prevented or how improved it is if we don't have the crashes, which is a good problem to have. So we can just use that same approach on another intersection where we think it might be working. Kevin Elliott 15:43 It's not a new approach, necessarily, but it is, I think it's relatively new in some agencies getting institutionalized like like that, because of, because of what you just said. It's a it's a hard bit of logic when you say, Well, we haven't had a crash there. Why are we doing something? But also the thought is, well, we don't want to wait till we have a crash to do something, looking around your system for characteristics that are risky, that you know are risky over here, and going ahead and getting ahead of them is a really good practice. And I would imagine, I don't, I don't know that if you've done this, but I've heard others where, when you can sort of bundle projects that way. If you have a if you have a contractor, they come out and say, Hey, don't just do this one. Go do this bundle of intersections, or this section of segments with rumble strips or something, and that gets your cost per lane mile down, or cost per intersection down. Have you all played with that? Nick Parr 16:36 Yeah, we use so we don't apply our own striping material internally. We always had a contractor in the past, and it took time and effort to get that contractor get multiple quotes. So what we've found with our paving project, so every year, we're resurfacing somewhere, and frequently we're applying pavement markings with a paving project. They already have a subcontractor, so we can, hey, you're going to stripe these roads as part of the paving project. But I want give me a cost for this intersection to add stop bar, stop ahead. You know, additional striping, even just at an intersection, and we can get a reduction of cost that way, because they're already going to be in the area doing the work. Kevin Elliott 17:23 What a great tip piggyback on an existing project. Because with what you're talking about, adding stop bars and extra signs and wider edge lines these, I mean, they cost money. Of course they do, but in the big scheme of things, these are relatively low cost treatments that you can fold into other projects. It just takes that. You think, like a maintenance guy, right? You think, like, Okay, well, we're already out there. That's why I think it's important. You've done all these jobs in the county, you just have a different perspective. You go, we're already out there. There's no need to go back and do it again. You have a sort of a mind for efficiency that way. What a great tip for others to say, hey, if you're already out there, and this is, doesn't cost that much to add to the job, and they already got the buckets paint. Have them. Have them do this. What a great tip. Another one that you mentioned early on, you mentioned it a couple times that I want to that I want to talk about, is your local road safety plan. Because a lot of this that's about, that's when you got on my radars, when we when we you and I met, was you all were going through that with Federal Highways, that through making your local road safety plan, and you just said it spurred a lot of this new thinking and a lot of this systemic deployment. If people don't know what a local road safety plan is, what would you tell them it is? Nick Parr 18:36 Well when I initially heard it, you know, I'm probably like not too many other people that say, I can't make everybody put their phone down, you know, I can't make the road safer after going through the local road safety plan, it was public engagement. It was public safety. We brought in, you know, transportation departments, we brought in big road users, and we got a lot of input about different aspects that maybe we weren't even thinking of and what we, what we, what came of a local road safety plan as we kind of walked through the process, was identifying issues, identifying areas, identifying crash types, identifying items that we could possibly make some improvement. And then as the plan developed, it turned into it changed my entire perspective. So what is a plan? The plan is a lot of tangible items you can do, but it was also engaging people that can do some on their part, with adding the pedestrians and adding the the ambulance service, the medical side of it, and what it did at highway is completely changed everything. It gave a purpose for our highway workers. We weren't here to cut brush and put up signs and pave roads. We exist to get. People home safe. That is in a nutshell, that is what came of it from me was we now gave our purpose to our entire staff. They're not here to clock in and clock out and haul gravel or haul asphalt. Everything they do, everything we do, is to get people home safe, to prevent the crashes. So you have the different, the different, you know, elements of the safe system approach. And, you know, we kind of picture ourselves as we just fix roads and design roads, and no we can get, we can lead this entire charge. We can have everybody in the safe system approach, all working together. But nobody was really organizing that and coordinating that and creating that collaboration, but doing it for our staff internally gave us all a purpose and set our vision. It set our mission, and we work toward that with every project, not just paving and chip and ceiling and asset management, but bridge projects and small structure projects going after funding. We talk about it all the time. Kevin Elliott 21:06 Well, that's probably the best endorsement I think I've ever heard for why you should do a local road states. And I don't think I could have said that better. I'm really glad we had you on the show today, because that's the whole point, right? That local road safety plan approach starts with, build an interdisciplinary team. Build your team like, go talk to people you don't normally talk to public health, EMS, school districts, law enforcement, everybody, because every This is our community. Come together, get their perspectives. And then I love that idea that now it has given purpose to your agency, to everybody at the agency, they know why they're doing what they're doing. Our job is to get people home safely. What a beautiful shift from doing a plan. And I think that if you build this with a group of people like that, and you get that buy in, well now it's a it's a purpose document, and it sounds like it's really energized your agency and help focus them on why they're really doing what they're doing. Nick Parr 21:59 That's exactly what it's done. I might be a little bit on the old school side. I still consider myself a younger person, but a lot of these, you know, a lot of this younger generation that we're finding that really have the passion to work here, that is what's made the difference of I'm impacting my community. We are not just workers. We are making a difference, and the buy in creates an entire different culture within the department, and it has changed how we hire people. It has changed how we interview people, and we've looked for the, you know, that type of person to join our team. And we have an excellent team of people that work here because of the changes we made in the lessons we learned. I think going a lot of that is attributed to the local road safety plan and the process that we went through to get there. The difference now that I work with is funding, you know, and I think you may get a lot of that from a lot of your other local agents. We don't have the money to do this. Well, we've been able to talk about road safety at all of our you know, every chance we get, really, it's in every email we send. It's a mission, a mission and a vision. And we talk about it at our elected officials. We talk about it at job fairs, Career Day, we talk about it our touch of truck events. When you start talking about road safety and you're talking about someone else's family getting home safe, everybody got to those events somehow, and in most cases, in our rural community, it was in some type of motor vehicle, whether they were riding or driving. And we have been able to say this is not just somebody else that's driving through town. This is getting your family home safe, and when you're an elected official position making decisions, who doesn't want to fund a program like that, where we can show what we're doing, we have a plan in place, and we are working the plan, and we want to update the plan and keep the plan with new information, and show the differences and show the impact of what we're doing. Kevin Elliott 24:03 That's wonderful. It's a beautiful thing, and also, too, it sounds like your local road safety plan let you go above and beyond. You mentioned that earlier is where you go. Hey, we have some roads that the typical engineering warrant was not there for, say, edge lines or center lines, but because you had this local road safety plan and you can fold it into other projects, and it lets you access extra safety dollars, which is a requirement of an increasing requirement of federal dollars, that you show us that you have some kind of plan for this money, adding all that together, then you are able to go above and beyond in some locations and add edge lines that would not have other otherwise have them. Nick Parr 24:41 That's correct. So what I was referencing earlier about the requirements when you hit a traffic count number, you're required to have pavement markings with center line and edge line, primarily center lines. What we did with our local road safety plan while we were going through that. The development of the plan, we quickly figured out the lane departures were a major issue. And we looked at the options of things that we could add, you know, go through the toolbox of treatments and rumble stripes or rumble strips are, you know, right up there with, Hey, we could stop these Lane departures when we have really narrow roads already, many of our vehicles would just be driving on rumble strips all the time, so not a real positive use of the rumble strips. We're talking about chip and seal roads. You start putting rumble strips into them. There's some other challenges with road preservation that comes into play. But we also didn't have striping on the roadways. So we had, we did a no passing zone study so we could identify when we did do striping, where we needed to put the passing zones and no passing zones, and we were able to include that in our plan. And then, because it was in the plan, we used the there's a state matching grant opportunity that you can you know, when you resurface roads, but items had to be in your plan. So we added striping to be one of the items in our plan. That was important for us to be updating, as we did resurfacing, so we could get matching dollars to just add the stripes when we did a paving project. Then we used it for also Highway Safety Improvement funds, so that the difference there is the roads had to be on system. What's considered on system, so an arterial or collector road before we could use the federal funds on the projects, but we could use the state funds on the local roads when we resurfaced them. Kevin Elliott 26:37 Yeah, so using that plan one to build this interdisciplinary team. Two, to go after money. Three, to strategize and go above and beyond, to deploy the systemic approach. It sounds like a like a textbook creation and deployment of a local road safety plan and and it sounds like you're reaping the benefits of of all those items too, of really using that plan and your team. We'll be right back with more from Nick Parr. Stay with us. Kevin Elliott 27:10 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 27:54 You mentioned earlier the safe system approach, and that is a relatively new approach here in America, not so much in Europe or Australia or some other places. For anybody who's like, what does that safe system approach? What does that even mean? What would you tell them? How do you see that? Nick Parr 28:11 From my perspective, it's a it's looking at holistically how we can reduce crashes where there's death and serious injuries occurring that it's not just looking at one aspect. It is looking at what how can we make people safer that are using the roads? How can we make the vehicle safer? How can we make safer speeds or safer roads, of course, in post crash care, so getting the full group involved is what made the bigger difference. That's what the safe system approach includes. All of those. I think we all get in our own little silos of what our specialty is. You know, we don't make vehicles here at the highway department, and we don't treat post crash. We're not attending at post crash care, but we can work on safer roads. Or what are things we could do to look at safer speeds? And we've taken it a little bit on our own to look at the safer people, because we do have the opportunity to be in front of younger generation people at career days and, you know, job fairs, and when we're at 4h fair, at the tuck a touch of truck events of not we may not be teaching everybody everything at that point, but they're realizing that we're people, and that we are humans, and that we have a passion for this and that we want to get people home safer. It may pique their interest in the future, right? Kevin Elliott 29:36 It's a redundant the idea that redundancy is crucial. So, redundant messaging, redundant countermeasures, redundant focus areas, post crash, care, drivers, vehicles, roads, like everything, adds up to make a system that is that makes sure if people make a mistake, when they make a mistake, it's not effective. Old mistake. I mean, it starts with the premise that people are going to make mistakes. Humans make mistakes. And when they do, we should, they shouldn't die because of it. And that is a premise. And so this exactly what you just said, is like, bring everybody in. Think of Try, try to blend our expertise, to make sure that people on the roadways are surrounded by these redundant ways to keep them safe. So when, when that inevitable mistake happens, we might, you know, have a fender bender or something, but at least everybody gets to go home. Nick Parr 30:32 I think the first step for everyone to realize is that it's not somebody else. We all make mistakes. We all have a moment of looking away, driving down the road, getting distracted something gathering our attention that possibly shouldn't be or in the event that someone else is doing something that distracts them and it impacts us, we all have to get that first acceptance that we are going to make mistakes. How can we? How can we, from each of our spots, do our part to help reduce those issues that keep popping up? Kevin Elliott 31:11 One of the most common challenges in rural areas and a differentiator between urban areas are speed differentials between different kinds of vehicles. And for those who don't know what that means, is on a rural road, you can have semi trucks, minivans, bicyclists, combines, horses and buggies, golf carts and ATVs. That's not something you see typically in downtown Indianapolis. That's a rural challenge. And so I know you all were working on an ordinance right on ATV, ordinance that because, and you're not alone, because around the country, locals are having to figure out how to ATVs. And everybody the all terrain vehicles, the big, you know, they're not quite a car, they're not quite a four wheeler, they're not but they're these big, fast moving recreational vehicles that are on the roadways. And so tell us what you all are doing to grapple with that. Nick Parr 32:07 Well, like, like you mentioned, they're quite popular. They started with the agriculture community, maybe not as big of an impact. They were using them from field to field, or, you know, for their purpose of working. And that industry just has grown substantially to not just be that type of vehicle, and in Indiana, they are illegal or not permitted by state law, so local ordinance has to be passed in order to restrict or control them in any manner. Well, what had happened is, years ago, many people gathered together and wanted to get an ordinance in place to allow them to be on the roadways. And what occurred after the fact was, you know, there was very little limits on it, if any. Basically, you had to have, you know, you had to own the vehicle and get a permit that said I own the vehicle and I have insurance when I got the permit, very short written ordinance, and that's been over. It's probably been close to a decade ago, and last year we had our first fatality, and our only fatality on our roads the entire year was someone in a side by side or off road, vehicle was turning and truck was trying to pass them, and they were hit and struck and killed. We had already been talking about updating the ordinance. Didn't really have the path forward on how we were going to do that, so we went to looking into other, you know, agencies and what their ordinances indicated, and I started searching state law. We thought we had restricted it to off road vehicles that were the side by sides with a roll cage with, you know, turn signals and a steering wheel, and we hadn't the state law allowed for basically anything that was an ATV, so didn't, didn't require the lights, didn't require driver's license, didn't require anything to operate on our county roads, and as you mentioned, mixing those with fast moving vehicles much heavier with all kinds of safety protection, these off road vehicles that were not meant to be on the roadway. So we modified the ordinance, went through a process of review with county attorney had public hearing about it and restricted the use where we don't allow actual what is defined as any of the code as an as an ATV, which is the handlebars, no rollover protection. They don't require turn signals. We eliminated those from being legal on county roads, and only allow the off road vehicle, which was we defined as a side by side, had to have a roll cage, had to have turn signals, had to have seat belts. They have to follow state law wearing helmets, and they have to have a permit. They have to have insurance. They have to keep the insurance proof with them. There was a lot of extra steps that we added into our ordinance to not only protect the user, but. The the individuals that are using the same roads as these items previously didn't have to actually keep the insurance. They just had to have proof of it at the time of permitting. So other motorists were, you know, being at risk of their vehicle getting damaged and getting hit by somebody that didn't even have insurance. There wasn't any age limits before we've put an age limit in place. You have to have a driver's license to operate. State law still requires a helmet anybody that's under 18. So we didn't have to do that any more restrictive, but we did implement the ordinance. It's been in place for probably three or four months now, still issuing permits at the highway department, but trying to improve that, I think opportunity for things to be to go completely wrong. These vehicles go much faster and are, you know, outfit with a lot bigger tires and bigger engines than they were 10 years ago when they first started being allowed on our county roads. Kevin Elliott 36:00 That's a great example to me of how a highway department can work together to work in other areas of the safe system approach, because you all work with roads, you can make the roads safer, but you also have these ordinances that help drivers be safer, safer users. And then the vehicles are safer, because you got to have the ones with the roll cage and the blinkers and the seat belts and the helmets and all those things. And so there's this blending together of, how can we build this system to get to keep people safe as the system evolves? Because it is clearly evolving. Well, Nick, this has been wonderful. You all are pushing the boundaries in Boone County and been a leader. You, like I said, You've been at this now with your local road safety plan since 2020, any other anything you would say to somebody, maybe a peer, like a county engineer or a roadway director of roads in another county that may be not as far down the road as you are. What would you say to encourage them or get them to look into some of these things we've talked about today? Nick Parr 37:09 I don't have any special training in any of this. I didn't get an extra education and how to work at a highway department, or how to seek funding, or how to educate the public, or any of those you know, parts of the safe system approach. I went to the trainings, I I saw the opportunity. I feel the passion about it, and I, I think that what is important is to take ownership of your role and look at a bigger picture of what you're there for, and what impact you can have and what legacy you can leave behind than just projects and infrastructure, there's a lot more to the long term impact of finding our way to eliminating people from getting severely injured or dying on our roads when it's preventable? Kevin Elliott 38:05 Well, Nick, great interview, great work you're doing there in Boone County, and it's an inspiration to others, and it's why we wanted to have you on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time I've been with. Nick Parr, he's the director of highways from Boone County, Indiana, and he's a friend of mine, and I'm really proud of the work you all are doing there. And I I just know that there are people who whose lives have been saved and they don't even know it because of the work you all are doing there. And that's the job. So thank you for being on Nick and keep up the good work. Nick Parr 38:40 Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Kevin Elliott 38:46 Thanks for riding along with us on home safely. If you liked 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 ruralsafetycenter.org, and until next time, stay safe. Stay connected, and let's all get home safely. You.