Goal: Zero Crashes, Injuries, and Fatalities

Safety Dashboard

A composite metric for zero fatalities is based on key performance measures. The individual criteria are weighted as follows:

  • Traffic Fatalities (29%)
  • Traffic Serious Injuries (20%)
  • Traffic Crashes (8%)
  • Internal Fatalities (28%)
  • Internal Injuries (10%)
  • Internal Equipment Damage (5%)
%
Current Overall Performance

Read more about composite indices

Safety Performance Measures

How are we doing?

For many years, our goal has been - and continues to be - zero fatalities on Utah roads. Aggressive targets for this goal reflect our intense dedication to achieve zero crashes, injuries and fatalities.

While these targets will be very challenging to meet, they will push the department to put the necessary resources towards protecting lives on our roads.

While employee safety has always been a priority, our data collection efforts have been ramped up in recent years allowing us to more accurately measure our performance.

Strategies

Safety Infrastructure Improvement

Every project and maintenance activity we work on represents an opportunity to improve the safety of Utah’s roadways. UDOT utilizes technology to help us identify potential improvements by accessing and analyzing crash data and roadway inventory information to make better informed decisions about installing new safety infrastructure.

The tools merge multiple data sets including crash, traffic and roadway data from a variety of sources to help our engineers quickly identify crash patterns, analyze roadway segments for areas of concern, and develop benefit-cost analyses for potential roadway projects.

To reach our goals we will look for opportunities to improve roadway safety with specific emphasis on improving:

  • Intersections
  • Barriers and guardrails
  • Medians and rumble strips
  • Signing and striping
  • Active transportation solutions for pedestrians and cyclists

Partner with Law Enforcement and Emergency Services

UDOT supports other agencies in their efforts to improve safety on Utah’s highway system and help us reach our goal of Zero Fatalities. We accomplish this by providing support in the following areas:

  • Prevent secondary crashes through Incident Management Team (IMT) and a queue protection program which proactively alerts approaching drivers of a traffic incident
  • Provide traffic signal priority to emergency responders to improve medical response times and reduce fatalities
  • Support law enforcement through IMT activities to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities

Improve Employee Safety

UDOT is committed to creating a workplace culture focused on safety. We are committed to creating a safe environment by encouraging our employees to think about safety in every element of their work as well as in their personal lives.

Recognizing, Observing, and Achieving Department Safety (ROADS) Program

The Recognizing, Observing and Achieving Department Safety (ROADS) program gives employees an opportunity to respectfully observe and engage peers on safety hazards and report safety incidents as they happen. To further implement the ROADS philosophy into our organization, we developed an employee committee to discuss and evaluate opportunities for improvement.

Public Outreach and Education

Zero Fatalities

Zero Fatalities is about eliminating all fatalities on our roadways. More than half (56 percent) of those who are aware of Zero Fatalities say this program has influenced them to avoid the top five behaviors responsible for deaths on roads.

Heads Up

Almost 100 pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists are killed on Utah roads everywhere. UDOT believes the road belongs to all users and that each of us must take responsibility to keep each other safe.

Truck Smart

The Truck Smart program partners with local driver education programs and the Utah Trucking Association to teach teens, and the public, about driving safely around trucks.

Safety Performance Measures

Traffic Fatalities

The number of deaths on Utah’s roads.

Target: Reduce fatality number by 2.5 percent below the three-year average.

Serious Traffic Injuries

The number of life altering injuries, such as severe laceration, broken or distorted limb, and crush injuries.

Target: Reduce by 2.5 percent below the three year average.

Traffic Crashes

The number of vehicle-involved crashes.

Target: Reduce by 2.5 percent below the three year average.

Internal Fatalities

The number of UDOT employee deaths.

Target: Achieve zero employee fatalities.

Internal Injury Rate

The number of injuries per 200,000 hours.

Target: Achieve a rate of less than 4.29 injuries per 200,000 working hours.

Equipment Damage

The number of reported equipment damages that occur per 200,000 hours.

Target: Achieve a rate of 6.85 incident per 200,000 working hours.