Program Planning, Development & Evaluation Honorable Mention: To Mendocino County Department of Transportation for Road System Traffic Safety Reviews
In the 1990s the Mendocino County Department of Transportation developed a program of annual Road System Traffic Safety Reviews to improve safety on its arterials and collectors by identifying accident patterns and installing improved signing and markings to mitigate hazards. The terrain of Mendocino County, a large rural county with more than 1,000 centerline miles of county-maintained roads, is mountainous with a few small valleys. Traffic related injuries and fatalities in the county are primarily the result of roadway departure crashes.
The effectiveness of the Traffic Safety Review project was measured by comparing accident data for reviewed roads with data for roads not included in, or influenced by, the reviews. Over two consecutive, three-year cycles, the number of accidents on the reviewed roads fell dramatically by 42.1% while on those county-maintained roads not reviewed, they increased by 26.5%. Using cost data provided by the California Department of Transportation, the County calculates that, for an expenditure of $79,300, the project prevented between $12.6 million and $23.7 million in traffic accident losses.
The results speak for themselves. Mendocino County has since expanded the Road Traffic Safety Review program to cover its entire county-maintained road system.
For more information, contact:
Stephen Ford
Mendocino County Department
of Transportation
Telephone: 707-463-4351
Email: fords@co.mendocino.ca.us
Rev. 10/30/07