A Moonshot for Traffic Safety (Part One)

Traffic safety remains an urgent and complex challenge in this country. Maybe it's time to try something different.

Car crashes remain the leading cause of death for teenagers aged 15–18 and disproportionately claim lives in rural areas, where fatality rates are strikingly higher. Despite decades of efforts and incremental progress, our nation faces a grim reality: road deaths have surged in the aftermath of the pandemic and have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels—numbers that were already unacceptably high.

There has been some progress over the last two years, with a reduction of 2,010 fatalities from 2021 to 2023. However at this current rate, it will take until 2031—an eight-year journey—to merely return to the fatality levels of 2014. This would mean that, over a span of 17 years, American society has made no meaningful progress in reducing traffic deaths. Achieving ambitious goals like “Toward Zero ” or even matching the lower fatality rates of countries like Canada or Australia seems increasingly out of reach without transformative action.

The Biden Administration made substantial investments in road safety, allocating $15.6 billion over five years through the Highway Safety Improvement Program and $5 billion through the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. While these efforts are commendable and signal a commitment to reversing this trend, their long-term impact remains to be seen. Given the scale of the problem, it is clear that much more will be needed to turn the tide on traffic fatalities and create safer roads for all.

The problem is clearly going to take more money (shocking!) to address, but how to best spend this money? Well I have an idea (or two).

Moon Shot #1: Build a true performance-based incentive program that rewards states for reducing crashes (ie pay them to reduce crashes).

When you review a State DOT strategic plan, it likely has a number of goals laid out around safety, efficiency, state of good repair, economic development, among other topics. However, there aren’t any carrots that a DOT gets for achieving the goals (outside of being a great public servant). So it’s very easy to write something bold “Toward Zero Deaths” in a strategic plan press release and then go back to doing the same old things. The lack of outcome-based incentives by the federal government encourages the status-quo for State DOTs.

Proposed Solution: Let’s simply tell State DOTs that we will pay them to reduce fatalities

Simple program construct - For the first year of the program, State DOTs get $1,000,000 for every crash they reduce from 2022 levels. The following year, they receive $1,000,000 for every fatality removed from the previous year. If fatalities go up, the base year remains the most recent year in which fatalities went down.

Program Cost: Let’s assume that we would aim for 15% reduction in fatalities every year (5% is current rate from 2021 to 2023). The cost of the program would naturally start high but go down over time.

OK, so the cost of an outcome based program like this isn’t astronomical. However, where is the proof that simply throwing more money at State DOTs is going to be able to make a 3x dent in the number of fatalities, particularly when there is already a ton of funding in the system right now for safety projects.

This is where we make things interesting. For each $1,000,000, the State DOT can use $500,000 for specific things - hiring additional staff, maintenance, operations, programs - but not to build new projects. The other $500,000 goes into a bonus pool for State DOT employees.

What?!? We are going to use federal funding to incentivize employees to hit desired outcomes? This would never happen in the private sect…..oh wait, this is literally how so many private sector jobs (including everyone I have ever had as a consultant, a start-up, or in a corporation) have their bonuses structured.

So why do I think this is a good way to actually make a dent?

(1) State DOTs are bleeding talent to private engineering firms and struggle to compete salary wise at even entry-level. Providing any sort of funding to allow them to compete to retain/attract talent would be valuable.

(2) Regardless of how often a DOT will say “Safety is our most important principle”, in reality every DOT is balancing congestion/travel times with safety. If safety drove every road design, we would see all red phases at traffic signals of multiple seconds, leading pedestrian intervals with every call button, and we would have a much bigger priority on state of good repair than building new.

(3) If every employee was incentivized to financially incentivized to reduce fatalities, you would create an internal accountability culture of everyone doing everything to address safety - and employees would not be happy if someone wasn’t pulling their weight because it would affect their safety bonus check.

Let’s use at South Carolina as an example to see how this would play out over time. In 2022 they had 1,094 crashes and I’ll guesstimate that there are 4,000 employees at South Carolina DOT. If crashes were reduced in South Carolina by 15% each year, this is how the program would work. In year one, SCDOT would receive $82,000,000 in discretionary funding and each employee would receive a $20,500 check at the end of the year. Not too shabby.

Clearly the financial incentive is signifcantly reduced in the out years which likely would require more $ per fatality reduced in order to keep pace.

So why not provide this funding to County road agencies, City DOTs, or toll authorities? Mainly due to the fact of how much more impact and influence State DOTs have on how funding is appropriated in a state. If State DOTs made safety their ultimate priority on how projects are selected, other agencies will likely respond in kind.

We cannot keep funneling more money to the same systems and expect to get different results. If we want safer (or cleaner or more efficient or more affordable) transportation, we should be rewarding those agencies that deliver the outcomes we want.

Well, now we’ve solved the road problem. Part Two will address how we make vehicles safer and then Part Three will focus on how we pay for this.

Thanks for reading.