GARFIELD COUNTY, WA — The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Roadway Safety Foundation honored seven highway safety projects in five states with National Roadway Safety Awards as part of a biennial program to highlight successful approaches to improving roadway safety at the state and local level.

“While our roads and vehicles have gotten safer over the years, clearly motor vehicle crashes still take a tremendous toll,” said RSF Executive Director Greg Cohen in a statement.

“These awards honor those who successfully identified dangerous deficiencies in their systems and applied our latest research and technology to implement effective and cost-efficient fixes,” he added. “We salute these winners — the unsung heroes who planned, engineered and implemented these innovative solutions — and urge DOTs across the nation to consider these projects and apply them wherever possible.”

FHWA Executive Director Tom Everett noted that the seven award winners were commended “not only in saving lives on our nation’s roads, but also for maximizing the cost effectiveness of federal, state and local funds that were used.”

Applicants were encouraged to nominate successful programs that were “innovative, cost-effective and could be replicated elsewhere.” Altogether, seven winners and one honorable mention were selected. The following projects won in the Dixie Contractor area:

Florida earned two awards. The first for creating the “Alert Today Florida” program to address the state’s pedestrian and bicyclist fatality rate via engineering projects, educational outreach events, paid advertising and high visibility enforcement activities. Analysis indicates that 18 lives have been saved, 324 injuries and 338 bicycle and pedestrian crashes avoided since its initiation.

The second award honored its “Design-Build Push-Button Contract”, which reduced the “concept-to-completion” period for safety projects by as much as 75 percent.