Acknowledgements

Maryland Highway Safety Officewould like to acknowledge and thank the following safety stakeholders for their role in helping make the summit a success.

Safety Summit Coordination and Organization

Mike Bible– Maryland Highway Safety Office

Natisha Galloway–Maryland Highway Safety Office

Debbie Jennings–Maryland Highway Safety Office

Joyce Kragelka–Maryland Highway Safety Office

Gerry Oglesby– Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration

Emphasis Area Chairs and Co-Chairs

Aggressive Driving

Captain Michael Yetter– Howard County Police Department

Michael Bomgardner – Maryland Highway Safety Office

Ernie Lehr– Maryland Highway Safety Office, Regional Traffic Safety Program

Distracted Driving

Major Kevin Anderson – Maryland Transportation Authority

Christina Utz– Maryland Highway Safety Office

Julie Maione – Maryland Highway Safety Office, Regional Traffic Safety Program

Highway Infrastructure

Bala Akundi– Baltimore Metropolitan Council

John Concannon – State Highway Administration

Impaired Driving

Kurt Erickson – Washington Regional Alcohol Program

Jessica Lambertson– Maryland Highway Safety Office

Occupant Protection

Captain Thomas Didone – Montgomery County Policy Department

Christina Utz– Maryland Highway Safety Office

Susan Solo – Maryland Highway Safety Office, Regional Traffic Safety Program

Pedestrian and Bicyclist

Jeff Dunkel– Montgomery County Department of Public Works and Transportation

Stacey (Tesch) Beckett– State Highway Administration, Office of Traffic and Safety

Mike Sabol – Maryland Highway Safety Office

Susan Solo – Maryland Highway Safety Office, Regional Traffic Safety Program

Invited Speakers

Deborah Hersman – National Safety Council

Christine Nizer – Motor Vehicle Administration

James Ports – Maryland Department of Transportation

Colonel WilliamPallozzi - Maryland StatePolice

Dr. Howard Haft – Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Dr. Kevin Seaman – Maryland Institute for EMS Systems

Tom Gianni – Maryland Highway Safety Office

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

About the Safety Summit

Planning for the Safety Summit

Opening Speakers

4 Es Leadership Presentations

Keynote Speaker: National Safety Council

SHSP Overview

Emphasis Area Breakouts

Aggressive Driving

Distracted Driving

Highway Infrastructure

Impaired Driving

Occupant Protection

Pedestrian and Bicyclist

Summit Feedback

Lessons Learned

Next Steps

Appendix A – Attendee List

Appendix B – Safety Summit Handout Package

Appendix C – 2016 Summit Evaluation

Appendix D - Presentations

Executive Summary

Maryland’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan Summit, held on April 26, 2016 in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, brought together stakeholders with common goals to collaborate on improving roadway safety in Maryland. In addition to briefing participants on components of Maryland’s new 2016 to 2020 Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP), the summit’s goals were to:

  • Communicate Maryland’s fatal and serious injury crash types, severity, and frequencies;
  • Promote the 2016 SHSP Emphasis Areas(EA) and encourage recruitment;
  • Increase collaboration and establish new partnerships to enhance opportunities for
    safety improvement; and
  • Identify new ideas and approaches for overcoming SHSP implementation barriers.

A majority of the Maryland’sSHSP Summit focused on introducing participants to the EAs and informing them of each EA’s strategies and action steps within the SHSP plan. TheSummit encouraged participants to join one, or several, of the six Emphasis Areas:

  1. Aggressive Driving,
  2. Distracted Driving,
  3. Impaired Driving,
  4. Highway Infrastructure,
  5. Occupant Protection, and
  6. Pedestrian and Bicyclist.

The eventalso served as a tool to spread the word about Maryland’s SHSP, collaboratively discuss its strategies and action steps, and sharethe direction for each of the six emphasis areas. The approximately 170attendees included members from each of thefour Es(4Es) - engineering, education, enforcement, and emergency medical services- from State and local agencies and organizations. Participants shared information face-to-face,which provided an opportunity to:

  • Exchange ideas and information about common challenges, emerging issues, best practices, and lessons learned;
  • Make valuable peer contacts that will allow the 4Es to work more closely together and share ideas in the future;
  • Engage the State’s leadership in the highway safety program;
  • Identify current and new champions and recruit new stakeholders; and
  • Motivate existing partners and re-energize efforts to reduce the number of fatal and serious injury crashes in Maryland.

Ultimately, the summit’sactivities served as another step to effectively implement Maryland’s SHSP.

About the Safety Summit

On April 26, 2016, Maryland’s Highway Safety Office hosted a one-day safety summit at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. Representatives across the four Es (4Es) - engineering, education, enforcement, and emergency medical services - came together to kick off implementation of the 2016 to 2020 Maryland Strategic Highway Safety Plan and discuss strategies and actionsteps to move Maryland towards zero deaths.

The summit’sgoal was to introduce partnering agencies to the 2016-2020 Strategic Highway Safety Plan, its six Emphasis Areas (EA), and each EA’s strategies and action steps. The summitalso provided an opportunity for Maryland safety stakeholders toform new partnerships and collaborate on methods for carrying out the SHSP’s strategies and action steps.

The summitbegan with presentations from leadership within Maryland’s State Highway Administration (SHA), Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), Maryland State Police, Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA), Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH),Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS), and the National Safety Council. Attendees were introduced toMaryland’s five-year data analysis trends andongoing safety initiatives in each of the 4Es. After the presentations, attendees wereencouraged to attend breakout sessions centered on the following emphasis areas:

  • Aggressive Driving,
  • Distracted Driving,
  • Impaired Driving,
  • Highway Infrastructure,
  • Occupant Protection, and
  • Pedestrian and Bicyclist.

Midway through the summit, leadership from the 4Es held a media event aimed at sharing Maryland’s highway safety challenges and strategies for improvement with the public.A complete agenda for the peer exchange is providedin Appendix B.

Approximately 170 professionals attended the event, representing each of the 4Es. A full list of attendees from the event is available in Appendix A. By the end of the event, more than 30 new partners indicated that they were interested in becoming active in specific emphasis area teams.

Planning for the Safety Summit

The Maryland Highway Safety Office (MHSO) designed the safety summit to engage practitioners and transportation personnel unfamiliar with the updated SHSP.Ideally, participants would range from SHSP Committee organization representatives, 4E partner organizations, and 4E representatives from each county in Maryland. To identify and invite this target audience, the planning committee engaged MHSO leadership, Regional Transportation Safety Program Managers, EA Team Chairs, and Executive Committee agency contacts.

The planning committee also worked with the Emphasis Area Team Chairs to developed their afternoon EA presentations. Each presentation focused on the team’s fatality and serious injury objectives, SHSP strategies and action steps, and current action items. The presentations ended withinstructions for how prospective members could join and contribute to emphasis area teams.

To complete the above work and organize the event, the Planning Committee met regularly to progressively define and refine the logistics associated with the event, including:

  • Identifying the summit’s objectives, agenda, and topics;
  • Soliciting potential dates and venues;
  • Defining the SHSP schedule, including peer exchange planning and SHSP development;
  • Inviting speakers, facilitators, and participants.
  • Coordinating invitational travel;
  • Preparing and distributing a “Save the Date” notification, shown in on the right;
  • Obtaining e-copies of presentations, Emphasis Area Fact Sheets (included in Appendix C), and supporting materials;
  • Planning breakout sessions, including format and topics;
  • Discussing logistics associated with registration, meals, handouts, room organization and
    set up, etc.;
  • Developing and managing an online registration tool for the purposes of registration ease and tracking capabilities and maintaining the registration website;
  • Developing a reception packet for attendees, including a folder with the agenda, note-taking pads, a layout of the location facilities, speaker bios, contact information for all attendees, an evaluation form, and supporting materials; and
  • Developing, collecting, and analyzing evaluation forms that assessed the quality of speakers, facilitators, and the facility.

Opening Speakers

Christine Nizer with the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration kicked off the MD SHSP Summit by welcoming everyone to the Summit, reminding the audience of the purpose of the summit, and introducing the leadership speakers from each of the 4Es.These speaker’s presentations focused on the innovative safety initiatives each organization is currently pursuing to help Maryland towards zero deaths.

Deborah Hersman with the National Safety Council followed these presentations as the keynote speaker. Finally, Tom Gianni with the Maryland Highway Safety Office ended the morning presentations by providing an overview of the SHSP Plan and encouraging the audience to attend the EA breakout sessions and signup for SHSP EA Teams. This section provides a brief summary of each speaker’s presentation.

4Es Leadership Presentations

Engineering: Maryland Department of Transportation

James Ports, Maryland’s Deputy Secretary for Operations, welcomed everyone to Safety Summit andcalled the audience to action to reduce motor-vehicle related deaths to zero. To help this goal, Mr. Ports announced that Governor Hogan allocated an additional 2 billion dollars for the Department of Transportation to spend on improving safety. Mr. Ports ended his presentation by highlighting one of MDOT’s most recent creative safety solutions: providing texting pullout areas on highways and installing signs before of every rest area reminding drivers that texting can wait.

Enforcement: Maryland State Police

Colonel William Pallozzi, Maryland’s Secretary of State Police,provided an overview of the issues law enforcement isfacing with impaired, aggressive, distracted or speeding drivers and how his agency is working to reduce these crashes. One effort allocatedoneortwo police officers from each jurisdiction to enact a campaign against distracted driving. During this campaign, police officers stopped over 40,000 drivers and issued over 30,000 citations. Another effort involved night patrols to reduce the number of drunk and drowsy drivers. Colonel Pallozzi finished has presentation by touching on aggressive and speed related crashes, and how law enforcement is trying to decrease them.

Education: Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Dr. Howard Haft, Maryland’s Deputy Secretary of Public Health,discussed the role of education in traffic safety and the importance of informing and educatingthe public. In particular, he focused on child safety seats. Eighty percent of children are riding in the wrong type of safety seat. To combat this, his agency developed a child safety program called Kids in Safety Seats (KISS) targeted at educating the public. Dr. Howard speech also emphasized the need for improved pedestrian safety.

EMS: Maryland Institute for EMS Systems

Dr. Kevin Seaman, MIEMSS Executive Director,focused on the benefits of the new eMEDS system. The program looks at integrating hospital data with crash data and public health partner data. He also touched on other network-wide initiatives (e.g. CARES) that can help bring crash related data together in order to better understand the causes and impacts of crashes. Dr.Seaman finished his presentation by highlighting the link between EMS and safety, i.e.,while the response time of EMScan determine if a person lives or dies, EMS responders are at greatest risk for injury. Thirty percent of riders in the back of ambulances were not wearing seatbelts in a fatal ambulance crash. There needs to be better education so that we reduce the number of EMS related fatalities and serious injuries.

Keynote Speaker

Deborah Hersman, president and chief executive officer of the National Safety Council,provided an overview of the Council’s vision to eliminate preventable deaths in our lifetime, including motor-vehicle related deaths. Each one of these deaths is 100 percent preventable.We have seen in the past that nationwide changes in automobile engineering, enforcement, education, and emergency response have significantly decreased the number of deaths. In the 1970s, the national seatbelt campaign launched;it is estimated today that 87 percent of people buckle up nationally. In 2005, the NSC called for tougher teen driver laws;today, teen driver deaths are down 50 percent nationally.

Even so, every day 100 people die in motor-vehicle crashes. Currently, unintended injury deaths are the 4th leading cause of death. Last year (2015), motor-vehicle fatalities increased by approximately 8percent nationwide. Part of this may be attributed to the improving economy and increased automobile usage. When the economy is good, people drive more, and the number of crashes increases. However, VMT only increased by about 3 percent in 2015, which is not a large enough increase to account for the 8 percent increase in crashes. We need to do more to decrease motor-vehicle fatalities and serious injuries.

We are at the same point that the aviation industry was in 2000, when they began sharing data from all flight data recorders. The improvements developed in response to this increase in data resulted in a drastic drop in aviation fatalities. We need to do the same for motor-vehicle crashes. Ms. Hersman called on all parties within the 4Es to continue to work together to eliminate preventable deaths and injuries. By working together, the 4Es can improve the understanding of why motor-vehicle crashes and fatalities occur and how to best prevent them.

Ms. Hersman discussed the single change that could have the biggest impact on motor-vehicle related crashes in the next 10-20 years; that is, the integration of crash prevention technology into every vehicle. If the fleet has the four primary crash prevention technologies, NHTSA estimates that motor-vehicle fatalities could reduce by 10,000. Several auto manufactures have promised to integrate these technologies into all new vehicles in the next 5 to 10 years.

SHSP Overview

Tom Gianni, Chief of the Maryland Highway Safety Office, provided an overview of the SHSP and the safety summit. He covered the agenda and logistical items, and encouraged participants to actively participate in breakout sessions and to join an EA Team. EA teams are the main contributors to the development of the SHSP and are needed to ensure that the strategies and action steps within the SHSP are implemented.

Mr. Gianni touched on each EA and some of their biggest trends and challenges.In 2015, Marylandsaw the largest fatality increase in 35 years. Maryland has a 92 percent seatbelt compliance rate but 35-50 percent of fatalities still involve occupants not wearing a seatbelt. Maryland also has one of the highest pedestrian fatality rates nationwide, accounting for about 20 percent of all Maryland fatalities. This equates to approximately 100 crashes a year that result in a pedestrian fatality. Finally, most motorcycle crashes are single vehicle fatal crashes, where the motorcyclist is at fault. All these challenges and more are tackled by the SHSP’s EA teams.

Mr. Gianni final slides emphasized that all agencies at all levels need to work together to save lives in order for Maryland to reach their goal of reducing fatalities and serious injuries by half by 2030.

Emphasis Area Breakouts

After the opening speeches, the summit allocated time for three breakout periods, one before lunch and two in the afternoon. Each period, contained three EA breakout sessions. Participants could attend any of three breakout sessions during each breakout period. The session choices provided to participants are shown inTable 1.

Table 1: Breakout Session Structure

Period 1 / Period 2 / Period 3
Aggressive Driving / Occupant Protection / Distracted Driving
Distracted Driving / Impaired Driving / Impaired Driving
Pedestrians and Bicyclists / Highway Infrastructure / Pedestrians and Bicyclists

This section provides a summary of the presentation and discussion within each breakout session. Session style varied between EA. Some choose to use the entire session for presentation with little time for questions or comments, while others allowed more time at the end for discussion and feedback. The below summaries reflect these differences.

Aggressive Driving

EA Team ChairsCaptain Mike Yetter, of the Howard County Police Department, and Mike Bomgardner of the MDOT Highway Safety Officebegan the breakout session by discussing some of the challenges facing the Aggressive Driving EA including defining and identifying aggressive driving through citation and crash data.

Afterwards, Sean Lynn and Alicia Shipley from the Washington College GIS Program summarized aggressive driving behavior data collected using both Maryland Automated Accident Reporting System (MAARS) and the Automated Crash Reporting System (ACRS). Specifically, Mr. Lynn and Ms. Shipley provided an overview of behaviors documented between 2011 and 2013 that could be attributed to aggressive driving crashes. Failure to Yield Right of Way, Too Fast for Conditions, and Following Too Closely were the three most common behaviors identified for aggressive driving crashes. The Washington College GIS Program team will continue to support data analysis efforts related to aggressive drivingbehavior.

Next, co-chair Mike Bomgardner summarized the 2016-2020 SHSP Aggressive Driving EAstrategies, identified the strategy leads, and described initial actions being pursued.Captain Yetter described how the EA Team will operate using quarterly in-person meetings to review and discuss strategy and action item progress. Strategy leads will be supported to completion of action items using temporary committees or individual volunteers.

EA team liaison Brett Graves described his role in supporting operations of the EA Team, as well as tracking and reporting progress. One such activity includes developing a Progress Meter that will provide a visual depiction of progress made at both the strategy and action item level.