If you could buy our public highway system a gift this holiday season, what would it be?
- Better rest areas?
- More lanes at the intersection that slows you down every morning?
- Brighter lighting on the shortcut you take once in a while?
Here’s our gift suggestion: How about a stronger culture of safety to shape every decision about every road project?
Yes, we know: It sounds kind of boring and bureaucratic, but we can’t help it. We’re passionate about creating a culture of safety through InfraStripe. In fact, InfraStripe exists as a traffic safety solutions platform to make everything about our nation’s highway system safer — everything from pavement markings to road signs to traffic management to driver habits.
So, with safety in mind, here’s our holiday wish list for our public roads:
Safety-Building Habits
Safety is not the world’s natural state. A safer world has to be built, deliberately, through our actions, our decisions, and our habits. We want more people who make decisions about safety to remember this fact so they can weave safety into every decision.
Safety-Minded Decision Making
At InfraStripe we start every meeting with safety. We ask how the decisions we’re making will affect safety for anyone who interacts with the project. We share this habit with every customer, every public official, and every contractor we meet.
Quality Work That Establishes Safe Driving Environments
We do not take lightly the impact that our work has on the safety of our communities. By completing more projects of updated pavement markings and road striping, installing new guardrail and readable traffic signs, and maintaining effective traffic control and flagging services, we hope to continue making the roads safer for everyone involved.
Automatic Speeding Fines Within Work Zones
For safer work zone traffic control, we’d like to see cameras-enforced speed limits in work zones. This could save lives. Once drivers learned they’d be fined any time they speed through one of our work zones — instead of being fined only when they get pulled over by a patrol officer — we’d soon encounter fewer speeders in our work areas.
More Recruiting Efforts
The traffic services industry faces a talent drain. When our experienced workers retire, we can’t always replace them with younger employees. Better talent recruiting could help close this gap. We celebrate Careers in Construction Month every October, but we can always do more — like telling high school students and young adults about the benefits of our profession.
Better Driving Education
Requirements for new drivers vary a lot by state. Stricter requirements for new drivers in many states could help make our roads safer. For example, teaching new drivers about work zone driving laws could help save lives in our work zones. And teaching new drivers how to merge lanes efficiently before a work zone could help, too.
More Innovative Intersections
Traditional intersections, where left-turning drivers cross oncoming traffic, are more dangerous than innovative intersections that route drivers more safely through intersections. We recommend better traffic flow by putting in more roundabouts, inverted bow ties, and other reduced conflict interchanges.
More Automation for Routine Maintenance
Artificial intelligence can improve safety for travelers. For instance, robots could conduct routine inspections of bridges, detecting problems more quickly while also freeing up human inspectors for more nuanced inspections.
That’s it — our holiday shopping list for the highway system. We wish you and everyone a safe holiday traveling season!