Scott Stanford:

Hi everybody, it's Scott Stanford. Welcome to the Infrastructors, the premier podcast for engaging conversations with influential thought leaders in AI, tech, government policy, and smart city innovation. Today's guest (you're going to love this one) is the Senior Director of Policy and Government relations for the Governor's Highway Safety Association, Russ Martin.

Russ, thank you so much for joining us here on the Infrastructors, my friend. Listen, as a nation, we're all a little frustrated that we're polarized, and we cannot all row in the same direction no matter how big or how small the issue might be. But it's different at the GHSA. You guys are a non-profit that aligns the states and moving towards zero deaths on the nation's roadways through leadership, partnership, and advocacy. Your state members are appointed by their governors, which makes us a positive and a bipartisan group as well. I think the country needs more of that. Tell our audience more about the GHSA's mission if you would.

Russ Martin:

Sure, of course. So, we're the Association of State and Territorial Highway Safety Offices. As you say, they're all state agencies on the state level within state government, but they support behavioral highway safety programs on the state and local level. So, these are programs focused on things that drivers do on the roadways that are unsafe. Things like impaired driving, distracted driving, speeding, not wearing your seatbelt. And that's in contrast to traffic engineers that are focused on the build environment and all the work that's done on the federal level to regulate vehicles. Our members are really focused on a lot of these behavioral issues that are the underpinning for a lot of crashes that are occurring out there on our roadways.

Scott Stanford:

When you talk about behavioral issues, is it alcohol? Is it distracted driving? Which is the number one cause, the common cause of accident fatalities and car crashes?

Russ Martin:

Well, if you look at national data, you will see that impaired driving, speeding, and lack of seatbelt use are the three common factors in the vast majority of fatal crashes in the United States. And that's true, but it obscures the bigger picture too. This is data that comes from police crash reports, so it's focused on things that police pay the most attention to. But we also know that the way the roadway is built, the safety of the vehicle, the emergency crash response, all these things can also be a factor in crashes. So, we're trying to look at all of this in a lot more of a systemic way to try and figure out what's going on out there and what we need to do about it.

Scott Stanford:

You're a national expert on behavioral traffic safety issues as we've quickly come to learn. A common experience for anyone who walks or rides a bike in the US, is almost being hit or being hit by a vehicle. Is much of the pedestrian safety discourse in the country shifting responsibility, if you will, to the vulnerable road users and really enabling a continuation of the status quo?

Russ Martin:

Well, I think it is reversing. I think that's the way it used to be, or it has been historically. There was a mentality of “you need to find someone to focus your programs on.” So, when we talk about drunk driving, we focus on the drunk driver. And maybe the mentality was like, if we're focusing on pedestrian safety, we need to focus on the pedestrians. But that's not the case because non-motorized road users exist in this transportation system that's really not built for them. Go to any place in the United States and you won't find crosswalks or sidewalks where they should be. And so, what's changing now is a lot of conversation about how that is backwards and how we need to flip that around and look at the bigger system to figure out how we can protect people.

Scott Stanford:

When you look at other countries, they'll use road design to slow cars and save lives. Should the US look to do the same? Do we do the same in certain places?

Russ Martin:

We absolutely should be. You can see it, depending on where you are. I think a lot of cities and urban communities have taken steps to control speed through the design of the roadway and that's really great, but it doesn't necessarily always fit everywhere. So, it's definitely something we're taking a look at and we should be taking a look at.

Scott Stanford:

We were talking about roadway deaths, and you see how preventable these really are. So why do we have such a hard time preventing them? What can we do? What do we need to address them?

Russ Martin:

It's hard to characterize because there's a lot of different causes for different kinds of crashes and different causes have different countermeasures you can apply. Thinking about the last couple of years and traffic fatalities have increased. We already have these roadways across the country that are built to prioritize the speed and convenience of cars, not necessarily to prioritize safety and certainly not the safety of non-motorized road users.

You have safety issues where you haven't really cracked the code on how to change people's minds about it, like distracted driving, speeding. Speeding's pervasive. It's been pervasive for decades and no matter where you go, people are over the speed limit and we can't figure out how to stop that. And then there are issues like vehicle safety. Cars today are the safest they've ever been, but there's still opportunities we're leaving on the table to make them safer, to make them more crash-worthy for people inside and outside the car, believe it or not. We have a sense of what we need to do, it's a matter of marshaling the resources to implement effective counter measures everywhere at the same time.

Scott Stanford:

The Governor's Highway Safety Association and General Motors, they're collaborating to combat distracted driving. Tell us about that project.

Russ Martin:

Of course. So, when it comes to distracted driving, it's an issue we've been dealing with as a country for about 20 years, at least with regards to distraction from wireless devices, from cell phones, smartphones. At least that's the way most people think about it. And we wanted to put together a comprehensive report that explains all the different facets of the issue. What the data says about prevalence, about crash, what's occurring in crashes, how police officers are enforcing distracted driving, how we at the safety community are talking to people about distracted driving, figure out what's going on out there in the states. What are the best practices and where are the gaps? What more do we need to do to address distracted driving?

So our report has a ton of recommendations, but I think one of the most important things that we keep coming back to is this idea of culture and people's cultural ideas about distracted driving. And no matter what we do to enforce laws, to have community programs, we're trying to implement technology that can prevent distracted driving. But I think until we change people's minds about distraction and have people have the mindset of, I shouldn't be doing this in the first place, I think that's what ultimately will make the most difference.

Scott Stanford:

Listen, you see it all the time. You just look to your left, to your right, you see people driving while they're looking at their phones. It's wild. I want to talk about E-scooters for a second. It's a novelty. It seems like they're here to stay because they're not cost prohibitive for personal use. Scooter share systems are expanding or launching in more cities. What are you guys doing to prioritize safety for, you could say, a really rapidly growing mode of transportation?

Russ Martin:

Oh, sure. So, as you say, within the last couple of years we've seen E-scooters pop up in many communities and our members are safety authorities in the States. So they would get a phone call and they're like, "What is this now?" So we had to figure out how do we respond to this? And I think we released a report about micro mobility within the last few years. And I think the main takeaway with the things that we're seeing are, it's not so much like fatal crashes involving scooters or E-scooters, but a lot of injury crashes. And I think that reflects the low speed at which they're happening and perhaps people misusing them or making mistakes with them. The other thing we try to keep in mind is that it still is very hyper-local. You have E-scooter programs in cities and urban communities. And so, it's not like everywhere in the way that other cars are.

So, I think with those two things in mind, you put a frame around the issue, but at the same time, there are obviously opportunities to do a lot of good within that community to work with E-scooter providers on safety messaging to talk about best practices and safe use and how to be a part of traffic when you're on a scooter and around pedestrians. Many of our members are venturing into that area, especially where these scooters are available.

Scott Stanford:

It's funny, I see them on Broadway in Nashville all the time. I say “this can't be a great idea,” but that's just on that one street. Listen, our roadways are going through a digital transformation. So, what technologies do you folks see increasing safety through data-driven technology and the advancements that they're making there, which every week is something new?

Russ Martin:

Well, I can talk about three major trends that I think are emblematic of the role of technology in highway safety. The first trend is vehicle automation, which is in the news all the time. And we have companies, and some of them are our partners, who are doing really exciting work to develop fully self-driving vehicles. That's really exciting,  think there's no debate that those will save a lot of lives and that when you take the driver out of the equation, you can prevent a lot of different kinds of crashes. It'd be great to get that technology out there. But I think that the challenge that we have is that we're not seeing the widespread deployment as perhaps we thought we would five or 10 years ago.

So, until we get that stuff out there into communities everywhere, we probably won't see all that much of a difference in crash numbers. So that's farther off in the future. That is related to the second vehicle technology trend, which is driver assistance features or what are sometimes called ADAs, advanced driver assistance features. And these are on the lower level of automation, technologies that take over driving functions temporarily or passively. So automatic emergency braking, lane keeping assist, blind spot warnings. A lot of these are technologies that are available to consumers right now. If you bought a new car in the last couple of years that has the technology package, you probably have a lot of these features on your car already that are helping you. So, the thing here is, this is not full automation.

You still need to be fully engaged as a driver and you're ultimately responsible for anything that happens. They're like copilot features. They're supposed to help you drive the car. And so, what we see is this is the sector where we will see the most crashes prevented soon by this kind of technology, but also the place where we might see a lot of misuse, abuse, and misunderstanding. And so, we're turning our attention more towards that area as a place where we ought to be thinking about ways to make a difference.

And then another trend we see is the big infrastructure bill that was passed by Congress last year. It had a provision to acquire passive alcohol detection technology as standard equipment in the future. It was known as the RIDE Act. And that is something that holds tremendous promise. And the vision is that you get in the car and there is technology there that is completely passive. You don't have to blow it or anything, you don't have to do anything, but it will automatically detect your breath or touch, your eyes or some other means whether you're impaired and the car just won't start. And that could save thousands of lives over years. There's 10,000 people killed every year in crashes involving alcohol and impair driving, so if we can get that technology out on roadways and get it into our communities, that can make a big difference. The challenge there is we're turning to the federal government to advance that rule making and figuring out how to do it and working out all the technical issues. It’s a big task, but I think it's an important one that we need to tackle.

Scott Stanford:

Oh my goodness, that would be an absolute game changer. You'd have a lot of angry drunks who can't start their car, but it would certainly save lives and it would save them from a lot of legal trouble as well. Again, just an absolute game changer. And listen, I don't see why that safety feature wouldn't be too far down the road. Here at The Infrastructors, we were looking at new AI technology that can replace those rubber tubes that we see all over the roads. We investigated it. The tubes are federally required to count traffic. They also use sensors and require lane closures that create traffic, lots of traffic and pollution. AI sensors can be mounted at the side of the roadway, keeping roadway workers out of danger, and eliminating the need for the pavement to be ripped up while we all sit in traffic. You think that GSHA would support the use of AI to obtain this federally mandated data, get rid of the rubber tubes?

Russ Martin:

I think we should be looking at all opportunities we might have to use technology in innovative ways and hopefully save money, time, and effort. But the thing is, I think about, this sounds like some sort of V2I, or vehicle to infrastructure technology. And I think about the speed in which the auto industry has changed cars, the speed in which the wireless industry has put tons of stuff on our phones. But then I think over here in infrastructure, when we go to change infrastructure, that takes longer sometimes. We look at our roadways across the country, they are often rated poorly. Some places can't keep the lanes striped, potholes and whatnot. Then so the idea of we're going to put a bunch of sensors into the roadway sounds great, but where do we get the money and do we have the capability to do it? And I think there's going to be communities that are going to pitch in and do it, but I think that's a longer term discussion overall. Not with just this specific technology, but all kinds of road sensor technology, but hopefully, we can increase safety and do things more effectively.

Scott Stanford:

Right. Yeah. And listen, that's the bottom line. You work closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, state and local governments and the highway safety community to implement lifesaving programs. Now, your members, state highway safety officers, are they hamstrung by complex program rules, the guidelines and what highway safety programs they can implement other administrative burdens? When lives are on the line, do you feel like they're hamstrung by government rules?

Russ Martin:

Unfortunately, absolutely. In fact, I think a large part of why GHSA exists, at least here in DC, is to keep everyone's eyes on the larger prize of focusing on safety and not so much on bureaucracy. And I can give you a couple of examples. There's a lot of rules that are, because of laws that Congress has passed, because of rules that the Federal Office of Management and Budget have established for all federal grants and then rules that DOT or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had set itself. They may be well intentioned, but the inadvertent effect is they end up making it more difficult to implement programs.

So, one idea is there's a federal rule that programs that have some sort of match, in other words, the state has to pitch in money, they have to match money in order to get the federal funding to put together the program. If you have a match, you can't do fixed amount awards. So fixed amount award is the idea of if you have a grant, we're going to pay you this much no matter how much time and money it takes. It's a fixed amount, it's a fixed award. But there's a rule that you can't do that, and all of our members programs have match, so effectively we can't issue fixed amount awards. But the challenge is, on the state and local side, we think, we have programs like child hazards or safety technicians where you have car seat check events. These are tremendous programs where you can take your car for free, get your child's safety seat installed for free. They'll figure it out, they'll do all the work for you. Who knows how many lives saved and injuries are prevented by these programs.

But it involves a lot of work, this universe of technicians, they do the same thing, taking the same number of hours to do the same tasks. Why don't we just set one single rate and simplify all the paperwork we have to implement this program? But because of this rule, NITSA advises states, we can't really do that. You have got to figure out a bunch of different rates. You got to keep track of all the stuff. It just multiplies the work of administering this grant. There are a ton examples like that where it's just creating more paperwork, for its own benefit, multiplying the tracking and the oversight that is involved with all of this work that's done. And to tell the truth, the infrastructure bill that was passed last year, I think, we and our partners spent a tremendous amount of time just trying to undo stuff that's just not useful anymore, some requirement for bureaucracy that was established decades ago where the state has to pay someone to do some calculation that just ends up at a filing cabinet and that's the end of it.

We're trying to get rid of all that stuff. Let's streamline things. People are dying out there on the roads and we want to make it as easy as possible to implement programs that will save lives.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah, no, it's fantastic. Listen, one of the things, Russ, before I let you go, one of the things we've discussed here on The Infrastructors is decreasing the need for a police stop to enforce minor traffic violations. Driving without insurance, for example, or driving with expired tags. Does the GHSA support using technologies that can really supplement existing and necessary traffic enforcement, if you will, conducted by sworn law enforcement officers, making these violations a mail notice to the citizen instead of a police stop. So, technology gets your license plate, we see you have an expired insurance card or whatever it may be. You get something in the mail, like when you're driving through the cities, you get a speeding ticket from a traffic camera. Do you see this being more prevalent in the future where police officers don't have to make traffic stops for the minor violation?

Russ Martin:

Absolutely. So, I would say that we have traffic enforcement that goes on across the country, and unfortunately, that's still needed because of the tremendous value it provides. We're stopping dangerous driving when we see it. We're holding drivers accountable. You have that general deterrent effect. Anyone driving down the roadway, you see a bunch of brake lights come on up ahead. What's the most likely reason? It's because there's a police officer there. People slow down, people react to that, prevents a lot of dangerous driving. The problem is, at the same time, we're also at this inflection point with law enforcement and you have these instances of abuse and racial profiling, so we can't go on as we could. So, I think our task has been how do we preserve the life-saving benefits of traffic enforcement while also pushing to achieve more equitable outcomes.

And one of the ways we do that is to decrease or eliminate these protectoral stops, which you mentioned things like tags hanging from the window or window tint or the light on your license plate or whatever it might be. These things that really have negligible impact on safety and they certainly aren't the causes of thousands of crashes every year, but police officers use them as a pretext for something else. And so we think traffic enforcement's best spent on those higher priorities. Drunk driving, 10,000 deaths a year, speeding, lack of restraint, distract driving. These things we know are causing crashes and killing people out there on the roadways. We want police officers focused on that stuff. It's no mystery how to find these people. Everyone's speeding everywhere.

If you hired a police officer today, they could probably spend their entire 20-year career doing nothing all day long but handing out speeding tickets. They'd never run out of drivers that speed. So maybe if we had more of that, we get people to slow down. So, I think anything we can do to find a different way to address these protectoral reasons or equipment violations and get traffic enforcement focused on the things that will make the greatest safety impact, I think we would be headed in the right direction.

Scott Stanford:

And Russ, one final question. Most importantly, will the Nationals have a better season than they did this past year or no?

Russ Martin:

Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.

Scott Stanford:

Russ Martin, Governor's Highway Safety Association. Russ, thanks so much. A little time here on The Infrastructors. Very informative, my friend. Thank you. Have a great week.

Russ Martin:

Thank you, you too.

Scott Stanford:

My friends, that's all the time we have today here on The Infrastructors. Join us next time for our conversation with the Deputy Director of the California Office of Traffic Safety, Timothy Weisberg.