MD Road Safety Audit Program

Wednesday Aug 08, 2007, 7:30 p.m.

By: Morteza Tadayon

Synopsis:

In 2005, the State of Maryland made a long-term commitment to implement a formal Road Safety Audits (RSA) program. The primary objective of this road safety audits program is to reduce the frequency and severity of crashes throughout the state in all modes of transportation. The RSA program is a proactive innovative approach, tailored to improve the planning and engineering design process for safer new and existing roadways. One of the greatest benefits of this program is the partnership of state and local governments and Community Safety Advocates and focus on road safety.
Since 2005, the state has conducted professional training for 50 state and local jurisdictions employees, with a range of disciplines such as traffic engineering, highway and civil engineering design, maintenance and construction, traffic safety, project planning, local police and community safety coordinators. The state developed its first RSA Manual in 2006, which outlined a formal process for road safety audits including roles and responsibilities, project selection, RSA Guidelines, and RSA Checklists. Subsequently, this new program kicked-off with several new projects to test the new process and streamline the guidelines.

About the Lecturer:

Morteza Tadayon has been with the Maryland State Highway Administration for the past 20 years. He has spent most of his career as a Transportation Engineer with the Office of Traffic and Safety (OOTS) and since July 2006, he has been leading the MDSHA’s Travel Demand Forecasting Section, Office of Planning and Preliminary Engineering (OPPE). During his tenure with SHA, he managed the development of traffic design standards and manuals for OOTS, primarily for rumble strips, signing and pavement markings, signals and lighting. For many years, Morteza had a vision that traffic control design should be interactive and automated, and SHA should be the beneficiary of the cost savings. His vision for design automation became a reality in 2001 when he introduced the concept of Integrated Design System (IDS). For the past four years, he spent tireless hours co-managing the development of this effort with his SHA peers. IDS is now a process that is implemented in all SHA design divisions. Morteza earned a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Louisville, Kentucky and also is a graduate of the SHA Advanced Leadership Program class of 2004, known as ALP. As one of SHA’s Business plan strategists, Morteza has led the effort in developing and overseeing the guidelines for Road Safety Audit (RSA) in Maryland.