{"id":175,"date":"2026-07-24T10:39:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=175"},"modified":"2026-07-24T10:39:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:39:05","slug":"talking-headways-podcast-our-roads-will-remain-dangerous-by-design-until-we-hold-states-accountable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=175","title":{"rendered":"Talking Headways Podcast: Our Roads Will Remain &#8216;Dangerous by Design&#8217; Until We Hold States Accountable"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>This week, let\u2019s talk to Steve Davis of Smart Growth America about the group\u2019s most-recent edition of\u00a0Dangerous by Design \u2014 the annual report on pedestrian traffic deaths in the United States and why we don\u2019t improve safety.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=173\">Friday\u2019s Headlines\u2019 Own Goal<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But if you know anything about Talking Headways, you know we give you three ways to enjoy our content:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check out the unedited transcript, which may have some AI typos.<\/li>\n<li>Use your ears and the audio player below:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" loading=\"lazy\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-forms\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/42190885\/height\/192\/theme\/modern\/size\/large\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/3c849c\/time-start\/00:00:00\/hide-playlist\/yes\/download\/yes\/font-color\/FFFFFF\" style=\"height: 192px; width: 100%;\" title=\"Embedded content\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Or you could read the cleaned-up transcript, which begins now:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Jeff Wood:<\/strong>\u00a0There are actual consequences for not spending money or not getting the results that you want. So in transportation policy, how do we get real tangible consequences for folks that are underperforming in terms of safety. Because they\u2019re obviously saying \u201csafety,\u201d but they\u2019re not doing anything about it. For instance, when the speed limit went to 55 miles per hour, the government took away money if states didn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n<p>In soccer, a team gets relegated to the lower level if it\u2019s in the bottom three of a division. And so that team loses money from the TV contract. And so there is something to say about having some consequences, like the ability to say, \u201cYou didn\u2019t do this correctly, and so until you improve we can\u2019t help you in this instance\u201d or, \u201cWe can\u2019t help you more until you improve,\u201d or something along those lines.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Davis:<\/strong>\u00a0We have a rough outline for what that could look like if we put any teeth on the system. Bear with me. We\u2019re at the very tail end of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was passed in 2021 as part of a big infrastructure package, right? But go back to 2012.<\/p>\n<p>The thing that all the states and AASHTO, their trade organization, has always wanted forever (and they will never stop asking for this), is more flexibility in how they spend the money. The federal transportation program is essentially a federally funded, state-administered block grant program. There are some restrictions on the funding, but for the most part, the feds hand blank checks to states. There\u2019s not a lot of performance required.<\/p>\n<p>So after years of saying, \u201cWe want more flexibility, we want more flexibility,\u201d the law in 2012, MAP-21, essentially created a new structure for measuring safety performance. States were going to have to set targets each year for how many people are gonna die on their roadways.<\/p>\n<p>And they did that. But the whole process got incredibly watered down during the rulemaking process. And essentially it is now a pretty worthless paperwork exercise that honestly we would be better off without.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=171\">The Last Straw: Duffy Asks Senate To \u2018Restrict\u2019 Funding For Bike Lanes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The only use of this process right now is that it gives us some transparency into which states are at least thinking about safety in an ambitious way. If you go to the FHWA dashboard for all of these performance measures, you can see what states are doing. But 15, 20 states are still setting targets in the wrong direction: \u201cIn the next year, we are planning for more people to die on our roadways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the problem with this system is that there\u2019s no penalties. A state is free to say more people are going to die and continue to get an increased amount of federal funding.<\/p>\n<p>When you meet those targets, you don\u2019t get penalized. And you don\u2019t get a reward if you\u2019re a state that sets targets for <em>fewer<\/em> people to die on their roadways. Some states are indeed spending money to get to that outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The main problem is that we\u2019re getting an incredibly bad return on the money that we\u2019re sending to states and even to metro areas. We\u2019ve spent a trillion dollars in federal surface transportation funding over the last 20, 30 years and what do we have: The engineers say that our roads and bridges are in roughly the same shape as they were back then.<\/p>\n<p>Safety has only continued to get worse and worse. Why are we pumping more money into a program that is not oriented around accomplishing anything.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t even have to be prescriptive about how you get there, but we do need to say, \u201cYou have to reduce traffic fatalities or you\u2019re going to lose money. And here is a whole suite of ways and solutions that are proven for things that you can go and do to make your streets and roads safer and try to get to those reductions that you say is your top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=169\">Thursday\u2019s Headlines Turn Cameras into Pillboxes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why don&#8217;t we penalize states that don&#8217;t cut pedestrian deaths?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pedestrian-death"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Talking Headways Podcast: Our Roads Will Remain &#8216;Dangerous by Design&#8217; 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