Winner of a 2001 National Highway Safety Award
The Midwest State Smart Work Zone Deployment Initiative (MwSWZDI) was been selected as winner of a 2001 National Highway Safety Award in the Operational Improvements program category. Sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Roadway Safety Foundation (RSF), the competition recognizes outstanding highway safety achievements.
The goal of the MwSWZDI is to develop better ways of controlling traffic through work zones, therefore improving the safety and efficiency of traffic operations and highway workers. State highway agencies in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska created the MwSWZDI pooled-fund study with support from FHWA and the Mid-America Transportation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The project is a public/private partnership between the sponsoring public transportation agencies, private technology providers and university transportation researchers.
The project, launched in 1999, deploys and evaluates technologies used to enhance work zone safety and traffic control. In the first two years of the project, 26 technologies were tested and evaluated by university transportation researchers in each of the four states. The state of Wisconsin joined the consortium in 2001, the third year of the project.
Products such as the SpeedGuard Speed Reporting System, evaluated in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, uses a speed monitoring display which informs drivers of their speeds and encourages them to slow down if they are traveling above the speed limit. When evaluated during the study, the system proved effective in lowering speeds and increasing uniformity of speeds in work zones. Another technology, the Wizard CB Alert System, is designed to give truck drivers advance warning of upcoming delays or incidents in work zones, therefore enabling them to stop safety before encountering lines of halted vehicles in advance of or in the work zone. The evaluation of this system in Iowa showed that truck drivers found the messages produced by the system useful in alerting them of approaching work zones.
Approximately 40,000 people per year are injured as a result of motor vehicle crashes in work zones. Over the past five years the number of persons killed in motor vehicle crashes in work zones has gone from 789 in 1995 to a high of 868 in 1999.
The MwSWZDI and all other award winners were recognized with a National Highway Safety Award plaque in a ceremony held November 8, 2001, in Washington, D.C.