Mixed-Use Safety on Rural Facilities in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

In the United States, one in 12 households does not own a personal automobile, and approximately 13 percent of those who are old enough to drive do not. Trips by these individuals are being made in many other possible modes, creating the need to “share space” among many forms of travel. The goal of this project was to improve safety and minimize the dangers for all transportation mode types as they travel in mixed-use environments on rural facilities by developing and using engineering and education safety measures. To that end, this report documents three specific efforts by the project team. First, they conducted a comprehensive literature review of mixed-use safety issues with consideration of non-motorized and non-traditional forms of transportation. Second, they conducted a novel analysis of trauma registry data. Third, they developed, executed, and analyzed the Pacific Northwest Transportation Survey with an eye toward understanding the safety perceptions of mixed-use users. Most notably, they findings indicated that ATVs (and similar non-traditional-type vehicles) are used on or near roads 24 percent of the time and snow machines are used on or near roads 23 percent of the time. There are significantly more (twice as many) ATV-related on-road traumas in connected places than in isolated places in Alaska, and three times more traumas in highway connected places than in secondary road connected places. Comparably, bicycles were involved in 449 on-road traumas between 2004 and 2011 whereas ATVs were involved in 352 on-road traumas. Users of all modes who received formalized training felt safer in mixed-use environments than those who reported having no training at all.