Kevin Elliott 0:00 Kevin, 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. I'm here today on home safely with someone I have known for almost a decade and been impressed with his advocacy and his passion and his technical work for safety in St Louis County, Minnesota. I'm here with Victor Lund, known as Vic Lund. He's a traffic engineer with St Louis County Public Works in Minnesota, and if you know anything about traffic and transportation safety, you know Minnesota, because the state generally is a very forward thinking state, and they lead the nation in lots of lots of ways, in safety. And then so just no surprise that Vic there in in St Louis County would be leading the charge that way as well. We're going to talk a little bit about what St Louis County is like, the makeup, what the rural situation is out there, and then Vic is going to talk to us about some of the great work they've they've done there, and hopefully you'll walk away with some tips that can help you where you live. So Vic, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for doing this. Vic Lund 1:38 Thanks a lot. Kevin. Appreciate it. Happy to be here. Kevin Elliott 1:40 So if I've never been to St Louis County, Minnesota, tell us a little bit about your about your place. Vic Lund 1:46 Well, we are in the beautiful north woods of Northeast Minnesota, and a lot lots of things about the county that I've come to know and appreciate over time. I'm not actually originally from Minnesota. I'm actually from Michigan, so we are the largest county geographically east of the Mississippi River, and also that the roadway mileage is is correlated to that where the county owns and maintains approximately 3000 miles of county roads, about half of which is paved and about half is gravel. But I like to tell people that you could drive from Duluth, Minnesota, which is where our headquarter office is, to Dallas, Texas, back to Duluth, and you would still have about 300 miles of county roads yet to drive. So that's the extent of the system. When I first got to the county, actually, when I was interviewing for the job. This is 18 plus years ago. I actually came prepared with some questions for the interviewers. And one of the questions I asked was because I was familiar with, you know, much larger or smaller counties. And I said, Well, what's your program, construction program, like? And they told me, and I was just like, whoa. This is not a normal County. We this is something completely different. So with that mileage comes, you know, there's a lot of lot of needs out there, particularly on the safety front, which we'll get into. But yeah, it's, it's a, definitely a unique County. But the nice thing that we also like to say, is we have also a metropolitan area for the Duluth Superior metro area, which we get to play on both sides of the coin. From a transportation agency's perspective, we have a moderate sized metro area with a lot of county roads that are servicing that area, as well as completely rural, backwoods Minnesota type stuff, where we have county roads that are gravel surface that might carry maybe three cars a day. So it is the full spectrum on up to, I think our highest ADT road is, I think, right around 20,000 vehicles per day. Kevin Elliott 3:46 And for those who don't know what AEDT is, average daily traffic, so how many cars are going down that road each day? I can't remember if you were the one. I'm pretty sure you were the one who made a comparison of the size of St Louis County. It's bigger than some states. Vic Lund 3:59 It is actually about the same size as the state of Massachusetts, geographically, if you, if you took a pin and cut out the county on a Minnesota map and then rotated the pin around the southern end of the county, the northern tip of the county actually would sweep to the south side of the metro or Twin Cities metro area in Minnesota. So it's, it's a significant size County. Kevin Elliott 4:21 So if anyone knows the challenges of a rural a big, rangy rural system, it's going to be you talk to us a little bit about the challenges you have specifically on your rural system. Vic Lund 4:33 Our safety challenges mirror Minnesota and they mirror the national numbers, but more so Minnesota numbers, where our rule number one rule issue is a single vehicle running off the road, and that type of crash, we call it a roadway departure crash, generates the most number of serious crashes on the county's rural system, as well as North Northeastern Minnesota and Minnesota at large. But you know, northeast Minnesota tends to have. Have a little bit more over representation towards single vehicle running off the road type crashes that are generating the serious crashes than the rest of the state. And that would make sense, since obviously the metro area, that's not what's going to be experienced there. But yeah, so that is always our continuous elephant in the room. If I could say safety challenges, addressing keeping vehicles in the lane. And the second major challenge that we're experiencing are intersection type crashes that are generated, also generating those serious crashes. So typically for the intersections, it's and this is going to be indicative across the nation, state county type intersection. So you have your primary state system. You have your secondary county system. Those types of intersections generally tend to be where those serious crashes are occurring as well. Kevin Elliott 5:47 Okay, so like you said, that's a that's the most common severe crash tap on rural roads in the country. You said, half your roads are gravel. Let's talk about that. Let's jump to the gravel roads, because you can't put rumble strips on them. What are some of the work you've done on those roads, or strategies you all take because such a big County and all that, all that system, what are some of the strategies you all have tried out there? Vic Lund 6:13 Well, before I jump into the strategies, I think it's important to talk about the propensity of serious crashes occurring on a gravel road system versus a pave system, the effort here in Minnesota on the county roads, the development of the county road safety plans, we are able to actually identify this trend. And I think it's worth noting that in St Louis County, also northeast Minnesota, that the pave system is about half, and the gravel system is about half across a lot of the counties in Northeast Minnesota, just like it is in St Louis County. Here's what we found, 90% of serious crashes are occurring on the paved system, and 10% are occurring on the gravel system. So but again, the mileages are about 5050, so in terms of over representation, just simply by asking the question, is it paved? Is going to give you a very good clue on where your risks are for seeing those future serious crashes. Now, does that say that we should discard thinking about gravel roadways? No, and we don't. Certainly it is true that you know their your toolbox is so much more limited on a gravel road than it is on a paved road. But you know, one of the things that we've focused on is curve signing. So if you're on a gravel road, you know, if you're coming up on a 90 degree curve, or even maybe a tighter curve, that's not necessarily 90 degrees, but more, more of a curvature feature to it. We will delineate those curves with signing. But remember, if there is going to be a run off the road crash, it likely is going to occur in a curve. So we do have tools to address that on a on a gravel road. So that'd be my number one suggestion. The second suggestion I would encourage, and we we've little more difficult, challenging from a resource standpoint, but is roadside clearing. So those would be the two primary strategies that that we've been look using, looking at and I would encourage others to think about, is signing and curves and roadside clearing for your graph, road system. Kevin Elliott 8:19 So like clear zones on the side and make sure that there's a recovery area if they run off the gravel road. Is that the idea? Vic Lund 8:24 Yes, another strategy that I think is important to think about. It's not necessarily thought of safety. It's more of a gravel road maintenance viewpoint, but just simply maintaining the gravel road surface, not only from, you know, a ride quality, but also managing your dust, so that could play some part into visibility concerns. So one of the things that we've been doing at St Louis County is we've developed a program called the grip G, R, i, p, stands for the gravel road improvement program. And basically what it is is we look at our gravel system, prioritize it based upon certain metrics, perhaps number of vehicles per day or something, or connectivity, or how it functions within the network. And we will strengthen the road base, basically so, or the road surface. So we will add a chemical product, typical, like, a chemical, like a calcium chloride, and that actually, that treatment increases the strength, which means it's requires less grading, significantly less dust, and also better ride. So just to kind of summarize it, I would say curve signing, roadside clearing, getting the trees out of the ditch, and then just simply good maintenance on your road surface. Kevin Elliott 9:42 Well, we're going to take a little break here and come back in just a minute with Vic Lund. He's a traffic engineer at St Louis County Public Works. Kevin Elliott 9:50 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 10:33 Okay, I'm back here with Vic Lund. He's a traffic engineer for St Louis County Public Works, and we were talking about the rural road system in St Louis County, Minnesota, Vic, you mentioned that 90% of the crashes in your rural system happen on paved roads, even though they are only 50% of the roads because the other half are are gravel out there. What are the reasons for that? Vic Lund 10:58 Well, I think a few things first, typically, we see the exposure relates to the number of crashes, right? So the more vehicles you have, the more risk, or more probability there is of something bad happening. The second thing is speed. Obviously, with a paved road versus a gravel road, you're going to see a lot more support for higher speeds. And with speeds comes, you know, the opportunity for if, if you're, if the driver makes just, you know, a simple mistake, such as distraction. And I want to necessarily minimize that, because it's a serious issue, but just a small distraction. Can you know if that type of speed can lead to catastrophic results? Right? And then, thirdly, if you look at the cross section of our paved ground or our paved roadways, I should say a lot of our paved roadways. And this is, I think, indicative across the nation. You know when, when the roads were constructed 100 plus years ago, we're still using that same cross section, so the shape of the roadway from left to right. Okay, we're still using that same cross section today, which means, you know, the roadside is what we would call non engineered so we don't have necessarily the clear zone, or that clear space that we're looking at. We would prefer an engineered roadway. Our ditch sections might be more of a V shape instead of maybe like a trapezoidal shape. What that means is that when a vehicle runs off the road, there's less forgiveness for that vehicle. You know, perhaps it hits a tree, perhaps it flips because of the ditch cross section, or something like that. So I think those three things generally lead to what we're seeing in terms of that over representation of serious crashes. Kevin Elliott 12:41 You've mentioned risk a number of times. Here you're looking around. There's a higher risk at Curves. There's a higher risk on paved roads. You're familiar with and deploy the systemic approach, and it's probably part of your like your local road safety plans and things like that. So in a big county like St Louis County, where you you just are never going to have enough money to treat every single location all the time. Talk a little bit about that systemic risk based approach you're you're hinting at for how you all decide where to invest your money. Vic Lund 13:12 I think the first thing to think about when it comes to this question of or this notion of risk is there's basically two ways that you can prioritize safety investments. One is the we'll call it the traditional method, which is looking at crashes, looking back in time. Of course, the issue with that approach is it's useful. We use it. You know, we will always use it. Use it. But it requires for things to occur before you can do something. The other way that we can can prioritize our safety investments is a more proactive approach we're using risk now. Risk is based on crash data. So it's developed using crash data, but it's what it does, is it teases out those features along a roadway corridor, along an intersection, that might have a higher correlation to having a serious future crash than not. The analogy I like to use is your is the medical system. If you go to your your medical doctor, they'll ask you your personal health history, your family health history, and they will use that information to kind of understand, what are your risks for developing potential future diseases that we can maybe proactively treat or manage or even prevent or minimize from occurring, versus waiting until you're further down the line and then it's more difficult to treat it at some later point. But with risk comes that ability to be able to invest safety strategies today, without having to wait for the justification of the crash data tomorrow. And from a resource standpoint, I think it's even more important to focus on risk, because there, there's, as we all know, there's very few dollars that are available, and the dollars. That are available, it's you want to make sure that you're putting them at the best spot possible, at the right time possible to get your best return on investment and risk. Is what we found, one of the best ways that we can to make sure that we're getting those dollars to the right place at the right time. Because remember, at the end of the day, the name of the game is we want to prevent serious crashes from happening in the future. One other thing to think about from a risk standpoint, a traditional approach would say that crashes equals risk. No crashes equals no risk, whereas a proactive approach would would say crash, no crashes does not equal no risk. So just because you don't have crashes at a particular location doesn't mean that you shouldn't be thinking about investing in that location. A quick example. This is from my personal experience at the county several years ago, we had deployed Chevron or curve warning signs, which include Chevron signs that over 100 curves across our county system. And one of the curves we treated was a little community about maybe 2030, miles north of Duluth. And I received a phone call from a gentleman who lived on that particular county road, and his His concern was that he had lived there for 50 plus years and had never seen a vehicle that had ran off the road in the curve that we just put up the curve signing for. And so he was asking for us to take the science down, because it makes it, makes it look like a highway, I suppose. But he said, Well, why are we doing that? And I had to explain to him that. Well, just because there hadn't been a crash there doesn't mean that there's a it won't happen in the future. In fact, because of the radius of the curve, the volume of the traffic on the curve, you know, there's next to an intersection, other risk factors that are correlated with those types of crashes, it rose closer to the top, which is why we treated it now. So it's a it's a different approach. It in terms of moving from a traditional view viewpoint to a proactive viewpoint, but I am convinced that it gives us a lot more confidence that the dollars or the resources that we're expending are going to the right places. Kevin Elliott 17:05 When you said, Rise to the Top, like you look at this location, it had these risk factors. It rose to the top of what, tell me what that logic was. I'm sure it's at some sort of priority list, a write up locations. Vic Lund 17:15 It is. It's a priority list, right? So you have, let's say, you know, make up a number here. You have 100 locations across your system, probably most people are having in the 100, maybe up into the 1000s, perhaps, right? But you have your totality of your system. Let's say it's road segments in one list, maybe it's curves in another list, maybe it's intersections in another list, right? And you look at your list, and you're like, for example, in St Louis County, we have over 1500 intersections on our system. Now, where do we start? Right? Think about, I use the analogy like a chess game is like, what's my first move? Where are we going to first start putting things on the board to start, you know, seeing results in our in our numbers improving here. And that, that's the question of the day, which is, well, then we can't address all 1500 plus intersections. Well, then what method are we going to use to help tease out the ones that we should be treating right? So that's answering the question of, what are your first few moves on the game board? If I can use that analogy, and again, we can use past crash history, but we can also use this risk based approach. And so basically, we're what we're trying to do is tease out, where is it more likely for those serious future crashes to occur, and so we can start mobilizing those safety resources today. Kevin Elliott 18:38 You mentioned too, a county road safety plan or a local road safety plan, and I think you were part of the f, h, w, a effort on the local road safety plans, right? It's a big deal. And maybe talk about the process of getting that done, and the value of having that plan. Speaker 1 18:54 In Minnesota, the the effort for our well, you know, nationally, we would call it the local road safety plan, but in Minnesota, we call it the county road safety plan, because that's what we're touching on, is the county road system that goes back to 2009 2008 time period in Minnesota, in terms of a quick history lesson. And there's some what I call the founding fathers of Traffic Safety in Minnesota, which were those early county engineers that really championed. And this is these. These folks were like the generation right before me. These were the folks that championed that the recognition of the need for the safety plan, but also getting the partnerships in place to actually get it done. And so the model that Minnesota followed in starting 2009 let's say was it was a UNIF or a singular approach, where the state aid division, which is a division within MnDOT, but their function is to work with local agencies across the state, including counties. And of course, it was a hand in hand process with the county engineers, but they developed a con. Tract, essentially that would generate specific, unique safety plans for all counties in the state. And so the first round in 2009 2010 all 87 counties in the state received their own unique county road safety plan at no cost, all right. And then phase two of that effort was saying, well, we recognize that some counties have been quite progressive in implementing strategies that are recommended in their safety plans. Others, maybe not so much. So the second round, we're going to have a cost component. And so for the counties that were interested, we'll give you the opportunity. You will get a second version or an updated version of your safety plan, but there'll be a match component to it, which is where we're finishing up in the last couple of years, that second phase in Minnesota. And then lastly, on a safety planning front, with the opportunity leverage from the safe systems, safe streets for all with the opportunity to do a Safety Action Plan. So what the county is doing now is we're working through that process to finalize another we'll call it our third safety plan, right? And really the flavor of that third one is looking back and documenting what we've done in terms of implementation, understanding, kind of more of an evaluation of what has it done for safety on our county road system, but then also, what are the the other gaps that we still have remain that we want to see completed with the safety action plan through SS for a Kevin Elliott 21:36 Okay, we're going to take another little break, and then we're going to come back and talk more about safety action plans and the process and the value of those I'm here with Vic Lund. He's the traffic engineer for the St Louis County Minnesota Public Works Department, and we'll be right back. Kevin Elliott 21:49 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 22:32 Okay, I'm back with Vic Lund. He's a traffic engineer for St Louis County Public Works Department in Minnesota, and we were talking about safety action plans. These have gone through lots of different names, local road safety plans, county safety plans in this latest round or latest version the Safety Action Plan you mentioned the SS for a the safe streets and roads for all grant program. Tell me the process you all are going through with your safety action plan and the value that those plans bring when you're trying to make your roads safer. Vic Lund 23:11 So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about the process here in a second. But the first thing I want to mention real quick is when it comes to implementing safety projects, there tends to be in admittedly rightfully so. I think some emotion involved, right? And what that means is a lot of people have a different differing opinions on how we should be implementing our safety projects, what type of safety project, those sorts of things, and one of the values that I recognized earlier on, especially with the opportunity for the safety action plan through the SS for a program was to help build consensus across our areas, or especially with our local units of government, so our townships and our cities, because there have been experiences from the county's perspective, where we've had Some challenges of opposition in terms of implementing our safety projects. And this, this was an opportunity, I thought, to say, well, let's actually bring in as many people as we can from the township and city level and just have these open conversations and talk about priorities, talk about needs, talk about the value of safety, talk about how some of these safety projects are counterintuitive, and you know, the benefits of different types of strategies, right? And so that was certainly one of the hallmark pieces of our Safety Action Plan, was just the engagement piece. Other things that we've done with it is, like I think I mentioned earlier, is we wanted to use it as an opportunity to look back. We've had two phases of a local road safety plan for the county, and we've gone through implementation for the last 15 plus years on those two phases, really documenting what have we done, and how has it improved safety, and what are, you know, maybe some deficiencies yet. And then lastly, what locations on our system are yet untreated or. If they were treated, maybe we have to turn the safety device a little bit and go from maybe something a lower cost to something that's maybe a higher cost safety strategy for maybe some certain locations, looking back evaluation, thinking about what gaps remain, thinking about really rigorous engagement with our township and city partners, and building that consensus, building that support, and then finally making some recommendations. Now the one thing I forgot to mention is because we've had two phases of a county road safety plan, we are rich in data, thankfully, that we can borrow from and bring into the Safety Action Plan, planning planning process, such as, for example, the segments are mapped out, the locations are mapped out, those sorts of things, and we can help augment, really, our Safety Action Plan process with the previous work that we've already been doing. Kevin Elliott 25:51 So it sounds like a much more disciplined approach. And then it also too it gives you, it gives you a communication tool, something for people to rally around and at least discuss whether they agree or not. You can say this is the this is the plan we're going for, but I would imagine otherwise, especially in a big county like St Louis, and you have lots of townships and locals and just a lot of competing priorities, it can be a very ad hoc type of thing at that point, right? But this, this gives a rigor to it, it sounds like Vic Lund 26:19 it certainly does. I was at a public meeting that I was leading to construct an intersection safety improvement project with what's called a J turn. Some people might call it a reduced conflict intersection, or reduced reduction in conflict U turn, or something like that. But there was a lot of emotion about this particular intersection because of its history. And what I discovered, and I realized after that meeting, was the pre, you know, the historical relationship between the transportation agency in the general public, I think what something like this? How many people have to die before you do something where the general public thought, well, there has to be, you know, unfortunately, there has to be a lot of bad things happening before we can get the transportation agency to finally relent and say, we should be doing something right. And then the transportation agency will say, Well, you know, it's not really about that. You know, we had a lot of needs and, you know, very few resources. And you kind of get into the cycle of that same conversation playing over and over and over again every time a serious crash occurs. What I realized with that public meeting back in 2018 19 is we traded sides. We traded sides to the table where I'm the person now showing up at local meetings saying we need to be doing something about this location or this segment or whatever. And I found that there tends to be, actually some people within the public now kind of on the other side of the table saying, well, actually, it's really not that bad. There haven't really been as many crashes as maybe you suggest there are. Or they'll have some other thought process there. And what I realized was, now I know I'm in this. I think this is really the essence. I know I'm in the sweet spot of safety when I'm having people tell me there isn't anything wrong, how about just go someplace else? That right there, I think, is the essence of getting into the proactive approach and really treating things before serious crashes occur tomorrow. Kevin Elliott 28:17 I think it's a very, very good way to frame that is, if people are saying or asking the questions like, well, we never had a crash here, like that farmer, that's exactly where you want to be. I love that framing and I and also to having a safety action plan that gives people, it's not, it's not Vic saying, I, you know, I've lived here a long time, and I think we should do this. There are data behind this, and has that been has that worked well for you, using that plan in public meetings and to communicate priorities and and allocate funding? Is that done that for you? Vic Lund 28:50 It has been tremendously powerful. And that's where another thing I learned. You know, one of the nuggets of safety plans, and I'm a student of transportation safety plans and transportation policy and that kind of stuff. But oddly, I enjoy that, but it's powerful in the sense of developing that consensus using a data driven approach, which means that it's not just me or some person's opinion, but actually we're following the data. We're having faith and trust, and the data is going to take us to the places that we ought to go. To go. But from a funding standpoint, we've seen tremendous results in St Louis County because we have plans that are giving a prioritization and giving a recommendation that's data driven. So our experience to date, and I you know, maybe we're a little bit abnormal in this. I know we are, but since 2010 which was my first safety project ever as a young traffic engineer, it was a six inch surface applied edge line, paint edge line on about like 80 miles or something like that. And so since that time through today, plus what's programmed in the. Hopper. As of right now, St Louis County has received over $30 million in dedicated traffic safety funding for our system, as well as state county intersections, and that doesn't include other ancillary type programming or programs that are out there. This is our what we call the H sip, the Highway Safety Improvement Program, which is a robust a lot all the states have access to that funding. Minnesota is one of those that's just thinking about our H SIP funding that doesn't include other types of programs that are out there, state programs, other federal programs that we've also received funding because of the safety plans. From a holistic viewpoint, getting funding for projects, going to public meetings, and be able, being able to explain to people why this particular location is a priority, versus just me showing up and saying it is a priority, tremendously powerful in so many different ways. Kevin Elliott 30:57 That's an excellent point that this makes a it has real opportunity for funding tied to it if you, if you do this, well, we're going to take one last break here and then come back and have some final thoughts and a couple more questions for Vic Lund. He's the traffic engineer for the St Louis County Minnesota Public Works Department. We'll be right back. Kevin Elliott 31:17 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 31:59 Okay, Vic, to bring this in for a landing and kind of some, some last thoughts on this. You've been doing this safety work in Minnesota now for a long time. What are you seeing out there that gives you hope for the future of Traffic Safety in your county? And then maybe, what are some things that you like? You know? These are, these are some challenges we still have that need to be addressed. Vic Lund 32:33 I am optimistic and quick story. Go back to when I first started. I started my career at the county I came right out of graduate school to this position 18 plus years ago now, and my our county engineer at the time, this is like within the first month of me being at my new job here, he said, Vic, I got I got you registered for a conference. It's called The Minnesota towards zero desk Conference, which, at the time, this would that would have been its fourth year for a conference, and also from a programming standpoint, at the state, it's the Minnesota towards zero deaths program, which is now, you know, 2022, 23 years old now. And the first reaction I had to that, and I hesitate, hesitate to say it, but it's just the way it was at the time. Was I thought, well, that doesn't make any sense. I mean, towards zero deaths. I mean, we'll never get there. Is it even possible? Right? I have since then, and I honestly can say this, that I'm not just saying I mean, honestly I view this way. I am convinced that it is entirely possible. And the reason I can say it's entirely possible because let's not focus on the state numbers. Let's not even focus on the region numbers. Let's focus on at the other end of the pyramid, which is the one intersection in your backyard, the one roadway segment that you're going to from your home to your work or place of work. So it's possible for us to get to zero deaths at A intersection I've seen it, which means it's possible for us to get to zero deaths on a compilation of intersections, and then we just build upwards from that point that that is a whole lot better way of looking at it from an optimistic standpoint, then looking at the state numbers, because that can be very disheartening. Can be frustrating, to look at those big numbers and think, How can we move the needle here? So this perspective, but I know that I'm optimistic, because we can see the needle moving on the micro level, but we just need to keep on adding to the hopper of intersections, locations that we're treating roadway segments. And I think I'm convinced that we will see those numbers get closer to zero, if not zero, eventually, Kevin Elliott 34:51 My last sort of, my last topic or question, because you teed it up just there, is on the safe system approach, which is a real. Relatively new approach in America is not new globally, but this idea that everybody has a little piece of this, and if we focus on our little piece, and we work with others around the so talk a little bit about, like, your understanding of the safe system approach, and maybe how you all are working to apply it in St Louis County. Speaker 1 35:21 The safe system approach, I think, is another absolute piece of evidence why I'm optimistic that we're going to get to Zero Fatalities, at least in our county and maybe even this neck of the state. First, there's a culture aspect to it that we're seeing good moves across. You know, both driver safety education curriculum opportunities of working with law enforcement to have positive interactions with with folks when they pull them over. Stopping people is not a bad thing. I always view stopping, you know, pull over, stops from law enforcement. And I've talked to law enforcement about this is it's another great engagement opportunity to change behavior. I've heard wonderful stories about people saying, well, yeah, I was pulled over once, and I used to do that, but I don't do this anymore, right? Those impactful stories from engaging with law enforcement, but also on the engineering side, on the culture aspect of not just within the public transportation realm, but also for in the in the private sector, when private consulting engineers are working with their clients and laying out intersections or other development pieces, and are they incorporating safe system approach features into their design features? It isn't just a, you know, a boilerplate template from, you know, traditional type engineering measures that we've done, but actually being intentional about it, of implementing safe system approach features into those designs, really using that tiered approach aspect of thinking about, you know, there's all these different layers of safety that we can build into our roadways. Of looking at the roadside, looking at, you know, the edge of the roadway, looking at our pavement markings, looking at intersection design is looking at, you know, other types of safety features, but really layering those things together and just keep on building on top of one another from your safety, your safety strategies. So don't, not necessarily just focusing on one thing, but saying, Well, yeah, I've done a six inch edge line here, but, well, how about we do some curve signing? How about we look at some high friction surface treatments and keep layering those improvements on top of each other? And I think that you're going to see some good results from that. Kevin Elliott 37:30 I think my favorite premise of the safe system approach and a way to maybe think of it differently than previous approaches. The core premise of the safe system approach is humans make mistakes. We're going to mess up. We do it all the time. We do it every day. And then the question, should our mistakes be fatal? Should roadway mistakes when they inevitably happen? Yes, they should. We should all behave better. We should drive the speed limit. We should wear a seat belts. Don't be distracted all the things, but assume they we still make mistakes. How do we make a system where those mistakes are not fatal and that puts us in a whole different mindset? Speaker 1 38:07 Well, exactly. I love the way you said that we have tools available. We have approaches, available, ways of prioritizing different safety strategies. We can do something about it, right? Does it dismiss responsibility to the driver? No way. But it does recognize, just like we've been talking about, even myself as vehicle on traffic engineer, I've made mistakes myself, and I look back and I'm like, Well, if my if, in one instance, I remember my wife was sitting in the passenger seat, and we're coming up on the back of a line of vehicles waiting on a traffic signal, and she's like, are you going to stop? And I was off, temporarily, off in a daze, looking off into the distance. And her reminder helped me. Oh, yes, you know, I was able to come to a complete stop, but I thought, you know, just even if she weren't there, would I have potentially had a rear end crash, possibly, right? That was a mistake, because I should have been paying more attention to where I was driving. So it just recognizes that we make mistakes, but we can also limit the severity by using a layered approach. Kevin Elliott 39:07 Well, Vic, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time today and also for doing this work in the trenches for all these years. Any final thoughts or any anything that you think is important that we haven't talked about or haven't asked you think is that people should know, Speaker 1 39:22 Identify some champions in your local area. It will be very difficult if you don't have folks that are not well. Passion is certainly a characteristic, but somebody who is attentive, willing to stay the course, you know, will be there for, you know, wanting to see actual results, you know. So they're there for the long term, right? But identify folks that are champions in your local area. Get them together with other other champions and let the magic happen. Kevin Elliott 39:55 Great way to end this interview. Vic, thanks for being here today. I. Thanks for sharing your heart and for sharing your hard work. And I'm real. I've been impressed with you for for a long time, and so we really appreciate you coming here and and sharing some of your expertise with our audience. Vic Lund 40:11 Thank you so much, Kevin, and I hope it's been an encouragement for those listening. Kevin Elliott 40:18 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 rural safety center.org and until next time, stay safe. Stay connected, and let's all get home safely.