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Combating RwD Takes More Than Just Chevrons and Rumbles by Rudynah Entera Capone

The nation, and Louisiana, for that matter, has a huge problem. It’s the fact that people run off the roads and end up getting injured or dying. Nationally, the numbers indicate that rural roadway departures are approximately one-third of the traffic deaths—that’s 30 people dying each day. In Louisiana, about 58% of the vehicular fatalities are due to roadway departures.

FHWA defines a roadway departure (RwD) crash as a crash which occurs after a vehicle crosses an edge line or a center line, or otherwise leaves the traveled way. Another term our partners often use is lane departure, which is synonymous with RwD, since both include head-on collisions when a vehicle enters an opposing lane of traffic.

Combating rural roadway departures is not as simple as putting chevrons here and installing rumble strips there. It takes more than just an engineering approach, for sure, but LTAP recently had its focus on three objectives when the team conducted a series of workshops on Combating Rural Roadway Departures across the state. These objectives are: first, keep vehicles stay in their lane; second, reduce the potential for crashes if drivers do leave their lane and; third, minimize the severity of crashes if they indeed happen.

FHWA’s Resource Center safety engineer Dick Albin taught the first two legs of the workshops in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. LTAP director Steve Strength and LRSP manager Leo Marretta taught the remaining classes in Lafayette, Lake Charles, Alexandria, Covington, West Monroe and Bossier City. LTAP collaborated with the regional safety coalition coordinators whose main goal is to liaise with local agencies in their respective regions in order to implement the Louisiana Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP), the Roadway Departure Implementation Plan, and Local Road Safety Plans. The common vision of these plans is Destination Zero Deaths www.destinationzerodeaths.com.

LTAP did more than just a classroom instruction to engage the participants in identifying ways to help Louisiana reduce rural roadway departure deaths and serious injuries. A field assessment was conducted to provide them the opportunity to physically evaluate a roadway in terms of “what issues and hazards exist” and “what can be done to address them” based on FHWA’s “Proven Safety Countermeasures” they learned from the class. Everyone also experienced how to actually determine advisory speeds on curves using ball bank indicators.

Resources:

Roadway Departure Safety: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/

Focus on Reducing Rural Roadway Depatures (FoRRRwD): https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/FoRRRwD/