Citation

Bair BO, Fognini WJ, Grubba JL. Transp. Res. Rec. 1980; 742: 8-11.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1980, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Immunity for action taken by governmental agencies has almost disappeared across the United States. As a result, transportation agencies and their agents are being held accountable for improper design, construction, maintenance, and traffic engineering of their roadways. Thus, the Oakland County (Michigan) Road Commission, because of very high insurance costs, has launched a safety-first program. Safety has always been included in road design, but it has often been compromised due to the presumed necessity to provide for more capacity. The Oakland County Road Commission has reversed this priority; this paper describes the Oakland County risk-management program, which is intended to place safety first in all areas (including safety for employees). Risk management is new to the transportation field. However, its operation is simple--(a) reorganizing the management decision process; (b) encouraging all employees to participate in a road-hazard-identification process; (c) analyzing all identified hazards, traffic accidents, and legal claims; (d) documenting and determining priorities for planning project programming; (e) providing countermeasures for the identified risks; and (f) evaluating the results and feeding this information back into the planning process.