OLYMPIA, Wash.-The Washington Department of Transportation has released its Gray Notebook, a quarterly performance report on transportation, highway and worker safety through June of 2023.
The Gray Notebook measures several areas of WSDOT performance, including traffic numbers, the state’s imports and exports and fish passage projects.
Active Transportation Safety:
The WSDOT established active transportation (walking and biking) metrics for safety in 2021 as part of the Washington State Active Transportation Plan.
According to the WSDOT established active transportation metrics include eliminating deaths, serious injuries, crashes involving individuals over age 65 and reducing speed limits to 25 mph or less in population centers.
The goal of WSDOT’s active transportation safety metrics follow the Washington State Strategic Highway Safety Plan, Target Zero, which hopes to reach the goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.
According to WSDOT numbers from the Gray Notebook, three out of four active transportation metrics rose in 2022 from the baseline established in 2019.
There were 147 deaths from crashes involving active transportation on Washington’s roads in 2022, including 136 pedestrians and 11 bicyclists.
408 pedestrians and 142 bicyclists suffered serious injuries from traffic crashes in 2022 and there were 31 deaths and 55 serious injuries involving people age 65 and older who were walking or biking.
The one active transportation metric that did show measured improvement in 2022 was the effort to reduce speed limits to 25 mph in population centers.
There are now 95 miles of road in the state with a posted speed limit of 25 mph or less according to the WSDOT.
Highway Safety:
In terms of highway safety WSDOT’s Gray Notebook shows serious injuries and deadly crashes on Washington’s roads increasing from 574 traffic deaths in 2020 to 663 in 2021, an increase of 15.5%
Serious injuries from crashes also increased 20% from 2,428 in 2020 to 2,924 in 2021.
According to the WSDOT’s data the increase in serious injury and deadly crashes is a decade-long trend, which requires a multi-agency approach to identify actions that need to be taken to reach the goal of Target Zero by 2030.
The WSDOT is focusing on areas of emphasis that the agency can directly affect by implementing crash countermeasures related to specific crash types.
Lane departures, intersection related crashes, and crashes related to road user groups (such as young drivers, older drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists, heavy trucks, and motorcyclists) are points of emphasis according to the WSDOT.
Worker Safety:
Agency wide worker safety rates showed marked improvement according to WSDOT data from the latest Gray Notebook, with the recordable incident rate dropping from 5.7 to 4.1 per 100 workers, for an improvement of 28.1%
The WSDOT hopes to continue the trend of improving worker safety through adding new signage, updating the hearing conservation program, having more frequent communications about safety awareness, and implementing regular stretching and flex exercising to reduce sprain and strain injuries according to the Gray Notebook.
