NYMTC Regional Pedestrian Safety Study - New York Metropolitan ...

III. ORGANIZATIONS FOR PEDESTRIAN SAFETY IN THE REGION
3.1 Agencies and Programs Concerned with Pedestrian Safety
Federal Level
Safety is part of the mission of the U.S. Department of Transportation; pedestrian safety is dealt
with by two of the administrative branches of US DOT, the Federal Highway Administration
(FHWA) and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). These
agencies play a vital role in pedestrian safety within the region because: they help to set the
agenda and policy in transportation; they support research and provide information from the
research about effective countermeasures; and they provide funding that can be used for
improving pedestrian safety. From the point of view of safety, FHWA concentrates on the
roadway system, while NHTSA concentrates on the vehicle and the driver.
As noted earlier, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is not part of this project as this
study’s scope concentrated on pedestrian/vehicular conflicts in the roadway environment.
Information on FTA’s transit safety can be obtained through their homepage (http://transitsafety.volpe.dot.gov/).
FHWA has declared safety to be both a strategic goal and one of their “vital few priorities.” The
other two vital few priorities are congestion mitigation and environmental stewardship and
streamlining. The vital few are those areas where FHWA believes it can make the greatest
improvements, and these are the areas where they will concentrate resources. Under the safety
priority, three areas have been identified: intersections, pedestrians, and run-off-the-road
crashes. FHWA set a goal to reduce pedestrian accidents by 2003, which was not met. In 1998,
realizing that it was not going to be met, they decided to reset the goal to a 10 percent reduction
by 2008 and to focus on those states and cities with the highest crash statistics.
The pedestrian safety goal of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is to continually
improve highway safety by reducing pedestrian crashes, fatalities and injuries by 10 percent
by the year 2008, saving 465 lives. Doing so helps us achieve our overall goal of reducing
roadway related fatalities from 1.5 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to 1 per 100
million VMT by the year 2008. Ensuring safe travel on roadways is the guiding principle
throughout the FHWA. Pedestrian fatalities account for about 11 percent of all traffic fatalities
and are one of the “Vital Few” focus areas of the FHWA’s Safety Office. Walking is a
legitimate mode of transportation. Pedestrian facilities need to be improved in every
community in the United States. It is not acceptable that close to 5,000 pedestrians are killed
in traffic every year, that people with disabilities cannot travel without encountering barriers,
and that a desirable and efficient mode of travel is often made difficult and uncomfortable.
[Source: FHWA Pedestrian Forum available at:
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/ped/pedforum/pedforum_spring06.html ]
NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Study 15