Safety Conference Takeaways from VA, WV, and D.C.

Last month, I attended three statewide safety meetings in rapid succession.

1. The West Virginia Highway 2 Safety Summit in Bridgeport, WV, hosted by the West Virginia Governors Highway Safety Program (WV GHSP).

2. The Virginia 2025 Highway Safety Summit in Virginia Beach, VA, hosted by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (Virginia DMV).

3. The Washington, D.C. United We Go 2025 Mobility Safety Summit, hosted by DC Vision Zero.

Together, they offer a snapshot tour of what’s going on in highway safety across the mid-Atlantic region. In this blog, I’ll share some high-level themes I’m seeing across all three events and dive into the unique takeaways from each.

Common Themes  

Cannabis Complicates Efforts to Reduce Drug Impaired Driving  

Virginia, West Virginia, and D.C. join most other states that have identified drug impaired driving as a major concern. Research shows that cannabis legalization has led to more drivers with cannabis in their system. Whether they are impaired or causing more crashes is matter of debate, due in part to the difficulty of accurately measuring cannabis impairment. One thing we do know is that many people who use the drug seem to have a blasé attitude towards getting behind the wheel that is dissimilar to our current culture of opposition towards drunk driving. Even habitual drunk drivers probably have a sense that they’re doing something wrong, but some cannabis users mistakenly think that driving under the influence is safe, or at least safer than drunk driving. The best possible evidence suggests that cannabis does impair driving, just in different ways than alcohol. There is much fascinating research out there on all these topics.  

So, we face an uphill battle to establish a new culture of safety that values responsible use of newly legalized substances. The safety community is thinking deeply about this, and it’s going to involve careful consideration of the audience of cannabis users, the nature of cannabis use (often at home rather than a bar or restaurant), and the benefits of linking up with valuable new partners. For instance, the Virginia summit featured representatives from the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority, which works with medical cannabis providers and sponsors a safe driving campaign. 

Federal Decisions Brewing Uncertainty 

Another popular topic across the board was everything that has been happening at the federal level. It’s no stretch to suggest we are experiencing a transformation of government. Highway safety, state and local agencies are seeing a sea change in the Administration’s transportation priorities, federal safety offices loosing tenured staff, the slower release of safety grants and resources, discussion of long-term funding austerity, and a general sense of ambiguity and unpredictability.  

Roadway Safety More Important Than Ever 

Nonetheless, I observed the commitment to roadway safety at the state and local level still being very strong. The good news is that there is a sense that safety has become more of a priority than it was before. Across the country, we’re seeing traffic deaths declining across most categories. People are reflecting on the past years of widespread adoption of the Safe System Approach and thinking aloud, “Maybe some of the new things we’ve been doing recently have actually been working.” It may be that states, cities, and regions, and their partners will be the ones to take more of the initiative in the coming years, and that itself will unlock new opportunities to save lives on our roads. 

West Virginia Highway 2 Safety Summit 

West Virginia Focuses on Intersections and Pedestrian/Bicycle Safety  

One innovation of interest in West Virginia’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) is the use of “regional emphasis areas.” While most SHSPs, including WV, have Emphasis Areas (EAs) that apply statewide, the Mountain State has also identified intersections and pedestrian/bicyclist safety as regional EAs in specific areas of the state. This may be because West Virginia cities and towns are highly concentrated, along with intersection and Vulnerable Road User conflict issues, but less so on rural roads outside of urban communities.  

Motorcycle Safety Program May See Updates 

At the meeting, we also heard about West Virginia’s recent Motorcycle Safety Assessment, which Cambridge Systemics helped prepare. For the state’s NHTSA program assessment, a team of independent assessors examined West Virginia’s motorcycle safety program, compared it to national best practices, and issued recommendations for improvement. With over 500 motorcycle crashes and over 35 deaths annually, West Virginia will be considering a number of program updates. Bordered by five other states, West Virginia also faces a significant problem with un-helmeted riders from its neighbors, and this is likely an experience shared by states that are destinations for riders.  

SAFE Promotes the Use of Intelligent Speed Assistance in Vehicles  

Speeding remains a significant issue in West Virginia. Some states now require mandatory speed limiters for reckless drivers, and several other states are considering similar legislation. SAFE presented on its industry Steer Safe Partnership to promote the use of active intelligent speed assistance (ISA) in passenger vehicles. GPS-equipped ISA devices installed in vehicles automatically and dynamically detect speed limits and prevent a vehicle from exceeding them. This technology is comparable to alcohol ignition interlock devices (IIDs), but also different in many ways. Like IIDs, convicted offenders would be required (by law or by judicial discretion) to have ISA installed on vehicles they own for a specific period of time and can be cited for circumventing the device or not having ISA equipped. Unlike IIDs, ISA requires no calibration, no breath tests, and generally doesn’t involve “violations”—it just limits the maximum speed.  

This is a dynamic space to watch over the next year. A confluence of factors has made ISA suddenly a countermeasure of tremendous interest: the increase in speeding during the COVID-19 pandemic, the availability of practical technology, the successful experience with ISA in other countries, the IID framework as a model, and broad support from across the traffic safety ecosystem. One potential barrier might be the start-up costs for state and local agencies that would run these programs, as they would need to update necessary internal systems and processes.  

Community Engagement Remains Critical for Rural Safety 

I participated in a panel discussion about community engagement—a prevalent area for growth in safety planning. West Virginia is a notably rural state, and the diffusion of rural communities would seem to make public gatherings more difficult. As we have found in the CS-supported WV GHSP, community engagement becomes an even more important part of safety planning for rural areas. A map of rural crashes may not show clear patterns that you can plan activities from, but members of the community can tell you about their lived experiences and the road risks that they observe every day.