Risky Roads Mapped Out

With the help and assistance of the departments of transportation of the states Iowa and Michigan, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety was actually able to make out a method and technique so as to map out the relative risks of some roads in and all across the United States. This new way of mapping out the relative risks one would meet in roads would actually assist traffic agencies and organizations know and learn about which processes and methods would be best to alleviate the high number of crashes and collisions that happen on the roads and highways.

However, one thing about this new technique is that the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has made sure that they would first be mapping out the relative risks of roads in the rural areas first. Of course, they do have their very own reasons for doing such. This kind of technique may be new in the United States however such a method is already present and in use in the continents of Australia and Europe.

According to the organization, with this new tool, agencies who do their highway work and statistical data would be able to check out and do assessments of risk of the various roads. They could also make use of any crash data that has been made available to the public. With all these kind of information and data coming in, sure enough, problems could be easy spotted and any kind of guide or strategy could be easily checked. We all surely would not want to see all those Ford Mustang parts and all other vehicle parts scattered on the road because of untoward incidents, or accidents for that matter.

As per this new mapping system, the AAA Foundation has just completed doing the first phase of this new kind of study. They are calling this study the United States Road Assessment Program which they lovingly dub as usRAP for short. Larry Tibbits who is the chief operations officer for the Michigan transportation department team does say, “usRAP provides us with an important new tool to enhance the management of our safety programs.” This statement given out by Tibbits has been expounded on by Tom Welch: “usRAP provides additional insight into our analyses of crash data.” Welch is the current state transportation safety engineer of the Iowa transportation department.

Says Tony Giancola, the National Association of County’s Engineers executive director, “These tools will be invaluable for state, county, and local engineers across the country looking to maximize the safety benefits from their limited resources.”