A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations (2025)
Chapter: Summary
SUMMARY
A Guide to Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations
This guide supplies a framework for transportation agencies and their partners in policymaking, planning, road design, law enforcement, injury prevention, and post-crash response, among others, to begin implementing Safe System–aligned practices and policies. These guidelines aim to accomplish the following:
- Provide a unifying definition of a safe system
- Describe organizational principles designed to foster a Safe System
- Articulate implementation of a Safe System by defining aligned safety strategies and practices
- Explain the roles of six interrelated practice domains (e.g., planning, design, policy) in creating a Safe System
- Present Safe System strategies that orient teams toward longer-term safety visions
- Illustrate safety practices drawn from domestic and international literature on Safe System interventions and policies
- Offer step-by-step guidance on how to effectively implement Safe System–aligned practices
This guide was developed as part of NCHRP Project 17-101, “Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations in the United States.” A conduct of research report, available as NCHRP Web-Only Document 413: Applying the Safe System Approach to Transportation Planning, Design, and Operations, complements this guide and offers greater detail on the research methods and results and discusses how the research informed the creation of the guidelines. This complementary report can be found on the National Academies Press website (nap.nationalacademies.org).
Intended Audience
These guidelines are primarily intended to assist state departments of transportation (DOTs) personnel and contractors, including managers and staff in safety offices, in implementing a Safe System. However, given the complex nature of transitioning to a Safe System, the guidelines are also germane to safety-minded policymakers; regional and local transportation engineering and planning managers and staff; regional and local land-use planners’ public works managers; traffic safety–focused law enforcement leads; state- and county-level public health professionals; emergency medical services managers; and transportation and injury prevention researchers. The introductory chapter, with its focus on Safe System–aligned organizational principles, is intended for safety team leads operating at all levels of government.
How to Read This Guide
The chapters that follow the introduction of and background on the Safe System in Chapter 1 provide guidance related to six distinct yet interrelated domains of practice in transportation safety. Reading all chapters ideally will provide the reader with a holistic sense of how agencies
and partners might begin to implement a Safe System in the United States. However, it is possible that not all chapters will be of interest or relevance to all readers. In these cases, readers are invited to visit the chapters and Safe System domains that align with their interests, skills, and safety-oriented goals.
Chapters 2 through 7 are uniformly organized. They each describe the role of the domain in fostering a Safe System. Each description is followed by an explanation of the need for a paradigm shift within each domain. Next, domain-specific Safe System strategies are presented. These strategies point to longer-term foci for safety practices and policies (e.g., clearly define the functionality of roads). An examination of domain-specific practices drawn from the domestic and international literature on Safe System interventions and policies follows. These practices have been appraised by transportation and public health professionals from around the United States in terms of the practices’ ability to improve safety and their feasibility to implement.
Following is a list of the specific domains addressed in Chapters 2 through 7 and the contents in the appendices:
- Chapter 2 explores Safe System policy, with a focus on creating and maintaining effective and adaptive policy.
- Chapter 3 covers Safe System planning and provides a more network-level and longer-term view of a Safe System transition.
- Chapter 4 is about Safe System design and its role in accommodating inevitable road-user mistakes.
- Chapter 5 offers guidance on adaptive Safe System–aligned operations and maintenance practices.
- Chapter 6 provides strategies and examples of Safe System law enforcement strategy and practice.
- Chapter 7 addresses Safe System post-crash response and illustrates ways in which road trauma management can feed into safety policy and investment discussions.
- Appendices A through F provide data on how different safety professionals appraised various safety practices across domains (e.g., policy, design, law enforcement) in terms of ability to improve safety and social, political, and budgetary feasibility to implement.
- Appendix G provides safety teams with a Safe System Strategy Implementation Self-Assessment tool designed to offer insight into teams’ phase of implementing Safe System–aligned strategies across domains of practice.
