The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recently unveiled a unique site to help local agencies reduce serious and fatal crashes on their roadways. The Local Road Safety Plan Do-It-Yourself Website includes resources local agencies and their partners need to create these lifesaving plans. Approximately 40% of the nation’s fatalities occur on locally-owned roads – an average of 12,000 deaths each year. Local road safety plans (LRSPs) are an FHWA proven safety countermeasure local agencies can use to identify at-risk locations on their roadways and deploy cost-effective safety solutions. FHWA, in cooperation with the National Association of County Engineers and the National Local Technical Assistance Program, has spent the last five years helping local agencies create these plans, but with more than 23,000 local agencies in the country, it is impossible to deliver in-person training to all of them. FHWA developed the site to connect with all local agencies efficiently.

“Local road safety plans get results and we have great interest in them from across the country,” said Jerry Roche, FHWA safety engineer and project manager for the web site. “We designed the site to be as personable and intuitive as possible, to emulate an in-person training in the virtual environment.”

The LRSP DIY site begins with an introduction page to orient users and follows with subsequent pages that walk them through the steps of the LRSP process:

  • Identify Stakeholders
  • Use Safety Data
  • Choose Proven Solutions
  • Implement Solutions

The site contains training videos, downloadable templates, “local agency insights” videos where practitioners can learn from their peers, and example plans from other local agencies.

“Our goal is to connect FHWA to America’s 3,000 counties and 20,000 cities and towns that could benefit from a local road safety plan,” FHWA Administrator Nicole R. Nason said. “This innovative new tool includes everything local agencies need to develop a local road safety plan to help reduce fatalities on their local roads.”