ATLANTA — Atlanta area leaders, law enforcement, and transportation planners are coming together to make our roads safer as traffic deaths have spiked in recent years.
Channel 2′s Steve Gehlbach was at the first Safe System Summit, hosted by AAA.
The summit is a one-day event that focuses on speed, distracted driving, and how new interchanges are designed, all to save lives.
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Deaths on roadways can’t be completely eliminated, but the goal of the Safe System approach is to have a more comprehensive way of looking at safer roads, safer cars, and safer drivers.
“We have a 16-year high in the number of people killed in traffic crashes,” Jake Nelson, AAA Director of Traffic Safety Advocacy & Research said.
He told Channel 2 Action News that the main thread through “all the work that we’re going to talk about today,” is speed.
The high number of deadly traffic crashes was the focus of the AAA event.
“Roundabouts, or traffic circles, is one way to reduce speed, but also change the angle of crashes that do occur to less dangerous kinds of crashes,” Nelson said.
Other organizations at the event included healthcare providers, who were there to learn more about prevention.
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Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta works through the Safe Kids Georgia program, making sure kids are buckled up and in car seats, and that parents and new teen drivers are educated about safe behaviors on the road.
“Always great for us to learn about the statistics, the trends, then see how we can implement that to change behaviors and educate families on how to keep their kids safe,” Lin Snowe, from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, said.
The Safe System approach includes setting safer speeds, not just through design but also speed limits, depending on the setting, circumstance, and time of day.
According to a statement from AAA, citing the U.S. Department of Transportation, ”applying the Safe System approach involves anticipating human mistakes by designing and managing road infrastructure to keep the risk of a mistake low, and when a mistake leads to a crash, the impact on the human body doesn’t result in a fatality or serious injury. Road design and management should encourage safe speeds and manipulate appropriate crash angles to reduce injury severity.”
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