Safety Center Research

Research is a small, but important part of the work that the Safety Center will take on. The ultimate goal for the Safety Center is to improve transportation safety. Transportation safety is impacted not only by road hazards and road user culture, but also by the decisions made by transportation agencies to address these factors to improve transportation safety. Effective decision-making is dependent on the knowledge and skill provided through participation in workforce training and education activities.

As the major task of the Safety Center is training and education, it is important that the Safety Center be founded on an understanding of the operational and cultural environments of transportation agencies that support the awareness, motivation, and utilization of workforce training and education resources. Therefore, this is the basis for the Safety Center’s year one research project.

First Year Project: Assessing the Operational and Cultural Environment of the Transportation Workforce.

This project will assess the operational and cultural environments of state, local and tribal transportation agencies. This is necessary for the Safety Center to use in developing relevant training and education resources, implementing effective technology transfer products and services, and compliments the planned marketing for the Safety Center by identifying strategies that can increase agency readiness to engage with the Safety Center for workforce training and education needs. (Safety “workforce” refers to employees of state or federal transportation agencies that make decisions that impact the safety performance of transportation systems.)

The key objectives for this environment assessment are:

This project started June 2015 and is scheduled to be completed in summer of 2016. For additional information on this project, please contact us at info@ndev.ruralsafetycenter.org.