Event Review: GHSA and AMPO

As a member of the traffic safety community, Citian staff attend national conferences to learn and share industry best practices. In September, Citian staff participated in multiple conferences. The first was at the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, IN.  This year’s theme was “Traffic Safety at a Crossroads: Charting a Course for Success.” Citian team members exchanged ideas and best practices on traffic enforcement and vulnerable road user safety with hundreds of the top traffic safety leaders nationwide. 

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We asked Account Manager Rahul Kapoor for a recap of his experience. This was Rahul’s first GHSA event and he learned a lot about State Highway Offices. Here is his take:

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“While not my first traffic safety event, GHSA was by far the most engaging. Always a pleasure to put faces to names and build relationships with industry leaders. I’m encouraged by how motivated public officials are to innovate and improve safety operations. 

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I had a couple of reflections post-conference: How do state highway safety offices get maximum behavioral value out of vehicle-centric traffic records? And how should HSOs work with DOT partners to accelerate pedestrian safety planning?

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Kicking off the event surrounded by dolphins at the Indianapolis Zoo was a highlight. Kudos to the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute for their tireless work in making the event a success!

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With so much talk about the safe systems approach, it’s no wonder State Highway Offices are sharing responsibilities with their local counterparts. It's also why senior policy officials need to be as comfortable with safety data as engineers. Citian helps safety leaders make the most out of existing, underutilized data sets while responsibly layering on new ones to optimize engineering and policy decision-making. 

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Citian also spent time in Salt Lake City, Utah to attend the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations Annual Conference

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Several sessions explored the topic of traffic safety including “Addressing Data Gaps to Enhance Safety” and “A Novel Approach to Safety Countermeasure Identification.” One of our favorites was on the “Perils and Promise of Vision Zero.” In this session, presenters acknowledged the disconnect sometimes felt between leaders who might find this goal unattainable and advocates who see the difference safety initiatives have made. Further, the session aimed to reconcile the unfortunate reality that in some communities, lives lost have not decreased despite adopting Vision Zero initiatives. Despite these challenges, successes have been seen when communities choose to approach safety differently. Communities must learn from each other's successes and failures to develop interventions that can be emulated nationwide. Then, the conversation steered to a discussion of the role that AI can play in supporting safety programming. 

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Citian was pleased to hear the industry at large sees the promise of AI in safety programming and its potential to improve data quality and automate historically expensive, arduous, and time-consuming processes. We are looking forward to seeing how the industry continues advancing!

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