University of Minnesota Experts Reveal Top 100 Rural Traffic Safety 'Hot Zones'

Online map identifies rural areas with most driving fatalities in time for
July 4th travel

MINNEAPOLIS and ST. PAUL, Minn., June 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Rural
transportation safety experts at the University of Minnesota today launched a
new national service to help drivers identify the most dangerous portions of
upcoming trips as drivers hit the nation's roads for the Fourth of July
holiday, which is considered the most dangerous travel day of the year.

SafeRoadMaps.org is a service that immediately identifies the location of
crashes through an online, searchable map. The service was launched last
summer by the University of Minnesota's Center for Excellence in Rural Safety
(CERS), but starting today it will flag the nation's Top 100 "Hot Zones," the
rural areas that have experienced the most fatalities over the past five
years. The hot zones are presented in a visually arresting Google Map-based
format, where viewers can zoom from a national map showing all 100 zones, down
to a photo of each individual section of the road.

The newest version of SafeRoadMaps.org offers several other enhancements over
the original version released in 2008. SafeRoadMaps now allows anyone visiting
www.saferoadmaps.org to enter a zip code, municipality name or street address
and immediately see a map or satellite image of all road fatalities that have
occurred in the chosen area over the past five years. Details about each
crash, such as whether the driver was wearing a seatbelt, drinking or
speeding, are also available. The tool also notes which life-saving public
policies, such as strong seat belt laws, are being employed in the chosen
area.

CERS was created in 2005 through the leadership of Minnesota Congressman Jim
Oberstar, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure. Oberstar has encouraged CERS to make rural safety more
visual, localized and personal to the nation's drivers and leaders.

While U.S. Census figures show that about one out of five (21 percent)
Americans live in rural areas, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has
found that about six out of 10 (57 percent) highway deaths occur on roads that
it considers rural.

"Whether you're a driver, policymaker or a road engineer, this is an eye
opener," said Oberstar. "Crash data used to be stored in huge dusty stacks of
paper in Washington, D.C. We've made sure the information is instantly
available on millions of screens, and it is available in a dramatically visual
and customized format. This is as important to better highway safety as the
interstate map was to achieving national mobility."

The Safety Advisory Zones include 100 from rural areas. While 29 states have
rural areas in the Top 100, the 10 states with the most "hot zones" are
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, North
Carolina, Texas and Virginia (in alphabetical order). A searchable map
showing all of the hot zones is available at www.saferoadmaps.org.

"Drivers often think of rural safety as an issue only for the least populous
states," said Tom Horan, CERS Research Director. "But this analysis shows
that drivers need to be extra alert in rural regions of the more populous
states, as well."

The SafeRoadMaps.org tool is being used in a variety of ways to educate the
public about road fatalities. For instance, driver's education leaders have
advocated use of the tool as a means to teach new drivers the importance of
following the rules of the road. Drivers are exploring their most common
routes and being educated about the need to take sensible precautions.
Finally, road safety officials are using the tool to better pinpoint where
policy, structural and traffic management adjustments are most needed.

"SafeRoadMaps is not about casting blame," said Lee Munnich, CERS Director.
"This is about making sure drivers are informed and safe, and policymakers
have a user-friendly tool to guide their safety-related decisions."

In addition to rural hot zones, SafeRoadMaps now also identifies urban hot
zones. Eighteen states have urban areas in the Top 100. The 10 states with
the most "hot zones" are Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland,
Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. These urban zones are
also viewable on www.saferoadmaps.org.

The Center for Excellence in Rural Safety provides citizen-centered research,
training, and outreach to enhance rural safety and to meet the needs of rural
transportation practitioners and policymakers. It operates as a joint
venture of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
and Center for Transportation Studies.

SOURCE University of Minnesota

Patty Mattern of University of Minnesota, +1-612-624-2801, mattern@umn.edu