Improving Roads and Reducing Deaths with the Safe System Approach

Jay Aber, Jon Markt and Olivia Polinsky-Rose Explore How Agencies are Turning Safety Principles Into Real-World Results

While crash data shows a recent decline in traffic fatalities in the United States, progress is not happening quickly enough to achieve the federal government’s long-term national safety goals. That gap is encouraging transportation agencies to rethink how roads are designed and how safety is prioritized.

A growing number have turned to the Safe System Approach (SSA), a proven framework that recognizes human error is inevitable and instead focuses on reducing the severity of crashes for road users.

HDR’s Jay Aber, senior traffic engineer; Jon Markt, transportation safety manager; and Olivia Polinsky-Rose, traffic engineer, recently co-authored an article in TR News examining the benefits of incorporating SSA principles into planning and design, and what this shift looks like across the country.

The article highlights how federal investment is helping communities create action plans guided by SSA principles. At the same time, state and local agencies are incorporating those principles into policy, design guidelines and everyday decision making.

It also explores how agencies are moving from planning to implementation, including from redesigning intersections and managing speeds to prioritizing safety over traditional methods like roadway capacity and operational efficiency.

“Every project ideally should be treated as a safety initiative,” Aber, Markt and Polinsky-Rose wrote. “By embedding these SSA-aligned steps into everyday decisions, any transportation agency — regardless of size — can spearhead meaningful changes that save lives, and anyone can become a champion of safer roads.”

Read the full article, “How the Safe System Approach is Creating Safer Roads” in the Summer 2026 issue of TR News, published by the Transportation Research Board.