Rural Safety
Rural Opportunities to Use Transportation for Economic Success (ROUTES) is an initiative to address rural transportation infrastructure. Specifically, rural transportation infrastructure’s unique challenges need to be considered in order to meet our nation’s priority transportation goals of safety and economic competitiveness.
Safety Initiatives
With financial support from NHTSA, these networks provide technical support to their rural counterparts:
- Law Enforcement Liaisons
- Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutors
- Judicial Outreach Liaisons
- A Tribal Judicial Fellow, the Honorable J. Matthew Martin
The Behavioral Traffic Safety Cooperative Research Program develops practical solutions to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce costs of road traffic crashes associated with unsafe behaviors.
Annual Events
Quarterly Events
- Regional Meetings with States and Federal Partners
Event Resources
Grants
Each year, NHTSA distributes over $500 million in formula grant funds to 57 entities including states, the District of Columbia, territories, Puerto Rico, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to implement data-driven highway safety programs to address the individual needs of each jurisdiction, including rural regions of the country. Following careful analysis of their highway safety and other data, highway safety offices in these jurisdictions identify communities who can benefit from the funding available under this program which can be used to address occupant protection, impaired driving, speeding and other issues relevant to rural communities.
Funding is awarded only to state offices of highway safety, which are responsible for planning and implementing the program based on formulas provided in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. These offices are responsible for making awards to sub-recipients, the amounts of which vary from state to state.
NHTSA maintains a webpage that orients visitors to the breadth of programs and resources to support grant applicants. This includes a Resources Guide, Management Review Information and Safety Program Assessment tools. The Resources Guide provides information to assist state and federal professionals to manage grant programs, including certification and assurances, equipment, planning, monitoring, and administration costs.
The United States Department of Transportation has developed this Applicant Toolkit to provide guidance as part of the ROUTES initiative to support potential applicants in identifying and navigating USDOT discretionary grant funding opportunities for rural transportation projects. In support of the initiative's goals, the toolkit provides user-friendly information and resources to support rural applicants’ understanding of USDOT discretionary grant programs and the funding process.
The Applicant Toolkit is designed for all levels of grant applicant experience, aiming to enhance access to USDOT resources for rural transportation projects. Specifically, this toolkit illustrates key applicant activities when participating in the USDOT discretionary grants process, catalogues USDOT discretionary grant programs by applicant type and eligible project activities in a USDOT Discretionary Grant Funding Matrix, and provides resources for applicants to maximize the potential for award success.
Trends and Data
Rural roads account for a significant proportion of total lane miles in the United States, and they play a significant role in our nation’s transportation system, safely moving people and goods to their destinations. However, rural areas face several transportation challenges relating to safety, usage, and infrastructure condition. The ROUTES initiative addresses rural transportation infrastructure by developing user-friendly tools and information, aggregating DOT resources, and providing direct technical assistance to better connect rural communities with the funding, financing, and outreach resources available.
Publications and Resources
- Rural/Urban Fact Sheet - 2022 For this fact sheet, rural and urban boundaries are determined by the state highway departments and approved by the Federal Highway Administration. The state highway departments use the boundaries determined by the Census Bureau.
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Rural Interactive Data Visualization
This portal presents interactive data visualizations that focus on highway safety topics of interest and are modeled after the information presented in NCSA's Traffic Safety Fact Sheets.
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Countermeasures That Work: An Introductory Resource for Rural Communities
Countermeasures That Work is intended to be a reference guide for State Highway Safety Offices to help select effective, science-based traffic safety countermeasures to address highway safety problem areas in their States.
- Geospatial Summary of Crash Fatalities Rural areas account for 71% of the nation’s public road miles and see nearly half of crash fatalities. With vast road miles to consider, this report quantifies the extent of fatalities in the first 15 miles outside of urban areas.
- Fatality and Injury Reporting System Tool (FIRST) The new query tool allows users to construct customized queries using data not only from NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System but also from the General Estimates System / Crash Report Sampling System to generate injury estimates.
- NHTSA Publications on Rural Safety National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) motor vehicle traffic crash data related to rural safety.
Tribal
- The Bureau of Indian Affairs Indian Highway Safety Program Reducing the number and severity of traffic crashes in Indian Country by supporting Education, Enforcement, and Engineering, as well as Safe Tribal Community Programs
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