Detroit Greenways Coalition

A new report compares Michigan with five other Midwestern states.

Walking, accessibility, biking, and transit saw considerable improvements in policy and funding with the adoption of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. An often overlooked piece of those legislative changes was the creation of a new document: the Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment (VRUSA, also pronounced Ver-roo-suh, for short).

The VRUSA is a tool to evaluate how a state Department of Transportation (DOT) understands the issue of traffic violence among people who walk, roll, and bike. It also documents what state DOTs are doing to address and improve the safety of vulnerable road users. 

While every state is supposed to follow the same guidance from the Federal Highway Administration with developing their own VRUSA, that does not always look the same in practice. These documents are essentially self assessments — the onus is on states to evaluate themselves and their efforts. 

In creating their VRUSAs, each state needed to detail their efforts to protect vulnerable road users in five key areas:

1. Overview of VRU Safety Performance – what trends exist in VRU crashes and what progress is the state DOT making to address this?
2. Summary of Quantitative Analysis – what data and methodology did the state DOT use to identify high-risk areas of VRUs?
3. Summary of Consultation – who did the state DOT consult with in the community and what solutions did these individuals or groups offer?
4. Program of Projects or Strategies – what specific steps is the state DOT taking to reduce VRU crashes?
5. Safe System Approach (SSA) – how was the Safe System Approach incorporated into the state DOT’s VRUSA?

The first major deadline for states to complete and submit their VRUSA was November 2023. After that, states are expected to update the document as part of their Strategic Highway Safety Plan update, which must be completed every five years. 

Thanks to funding from the RE-AMP Network, we were able to study this further in partnership with BikeWalkKC, 1000 Friends of Iowa, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, Bike Cleveland and Transportation Riders United. We analyzed and compared the VRUSAs of Michigan and five other states and compiled our work into the findings below:

Click here to read the report: Comparing Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessments in the Midwest

The report covers three key areas:

1. Ways that the Federal Highway Administration can strengthen its guidance on how state DOTs develop their VRUSAs,
2. Details on how each state completed (or didn’t complete) the required parts of a VRUSA, and
3. Recommendations on how those states can do more to support the needs of vulnerable road users in the future.

Additionally, the report makes recommendations for how each state DOT can do more to support the needs of vulnerable road users. What did this look like for Michigan?

• MDOT’s program of projects and strategies should address the changes needed to make VRU safety a key criteria in road project funding prioritization (e.g. implementation of Virginia’s SMART SCALE program).
• MDOT should identify existing projects and strategies that are a barrier to improving VRU safety.

In light of these points, the question becomes: “How can advocates in other states use this approach to push their state DOTs to do more for Vulnerable Road Users?” Examples include:

• Draw attention to dangerous corridors. Use the report to highlight the dangers for people who walk, roll, and bike along corridors identified as harmful. Invite your state DOT staff and/or local media to do a walk audit along those corridors so they understand the challenges from the pedestrian perspective.
• Share the VRUSA with local leaders. Make sure that the elected leaders and staff of communities that are overrepresented in your state’s VRUSA know and understand why their community is unsafe for vulnerable road users and what can be done to address it. That can help to strengthen your efforts to get the state DOT to do more.
• Push state DOTs to take steps they have missed or ignored. What the VRUSA says or does not say is a reflection of what a state DOT has done or not done. Advocates can help the public understand that the poor safety outcomes may speak to the need for additional steps. In Missouri, for example, BikeWalkKC is using the VRUSA to push MoDOT to develop a statewide active transportation plan (one of only five states that has not taken this crucial step).

In publishing this report, we hope to demystify the Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment for active transportation advocates across the country. The goal is to make it easier for people to understand what their state DOT is (or is not) doing for its most vulnerable road users. It serves as a tool to help people push their state DOTs to do better.

The fact that 54% of pedestrian fatalities occur on state-owned roads, according to the group Smart Growth America, means the VRUSA comes at a critical time in the fight for safer streets.

Streetsblog has also covered this report in Everything You Need to Know About Keeping Pedestrians and Bicyclists Safe In Your State, in One Document. It includes an interview with Michael Kelley of BikeWalkKC, who helped lead this project.