Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good morning again, Wednesday, January 14. We are back in our regular seats in house transportation after a joint hearing with the senate on highway safety crash data, public safety. And we're continuing that theme for the rest of the day. And we have a highly championed witness who was endorsed heavily by the Vermont State Police in the last testimony. So we have a rock star in our presence and the first time committee for, at least for this biennium. Manny, we're going to turn it over to you and fire away.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Thank you for having me. For the record, my name is Mandy Batney. I manage our data and analytics section in our operations and safety bureau at B TRANS. I don't claim to be a rock star, but I have about twenty six years of experience working with the crash data and with law enforcement. So I know them well, and I know the data pretty well. So I will go through some slides. Yes, a lot of data on them. And we'll talk a little bit about 2024 crashes comparing to what we know for 2025, prefacing a whole thing with 2025 isn't the final. We're still waiting on apology for all eight of our December fatal crashes. I'll probably say that multiple times through the end. So, thank you for having me. Alright. So some of this I added in after I testified last week with Senate. They asked a lot of questions. So I wanted to try to answer those in this committee right up front. So first of all, I have our annual fatalities and serious injuries with five year rolling averages. So the bars are the actual numbers. And then the orange lines on each of these is the five year rolling average with the black dotted line being trend. As you can see, so I pulled ten years in. We normally look at five. But again, there was a desire to see a longer period of time to see where we are situated prior to and after COVID. So the five year rolling averages are a standard national approach. We use that to control statistical fluctuations. In Vermont, we have what we would call a smaller number of fatalities. For little Vermont, it isn't small, in my opinion. These are still sixty, 70 people or families that are losing loved ones. So the five year averages are also used in our strategic highway safety plan and the highway safety office. As you can see from this, 2019, we had a little drop. If I had gone further back, 2014 also had a very significant drop of about forty four fatalities. So we have this anomaly year almost every five years for a lot of my career. So it's an interesting up and down that we see. We did spike in 'twenty two with seventy six. We're coming in at sixty one currently for this year. As far as serious injuries, I added this one in here as well because I wanted to show how serious injuries are also impacting our roads. So serious injuries also were in a deep line for several years. Starting in 2021, they started to climb. And we are actually, since last week, I relooked at these numbers. I haven't had the chance to change this one yet. But we're at three twenty two for 2025 so far. And again, data is not final. And that just shows the difference from one week to another. We've had more crashes come in from last year, and we're showing four more serious injury crashes in the data or serious injuries data.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Sorry, would you say there's eight in December? Eight fatal fatal

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: crashes in December that we do not have all of the information from. It takes upwards of ninety days for an investigation and a fatal crash. Eight times 12 would be a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: lot more than, well, if it was that, yeah. So it sounds like a bad month. Yes. It's a very bad

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: month. The eight is in the 61.

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Right. Yes. But if December was

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: the same, addictive every month, that would be a very bad year.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Yes. All right. I'm going to jump into a little bit of, and I'll try to explain this as best as I can our fatalities and our annual vehicle miles traveled. So for Vermont, that's the number of vehicles we calculate by driving on our roads annually. I put the orange line. I only gave you a couple of numbers at the beginning. So back in 1994, our annual vehicle miles traveled for Vermont was just over 6,000,000. Oh my gosh. 6,000,000. Thank you. Billion. Thank you. I'm trying to count, yes. 6,000,000,000. During COVID, we dropped to just under 6,000,000,000. And then we have come back for 2024. We're about seven point two billion. And then I added in our fatalities for those same years from 1994 to 2025. And as you can see, as I mentioned earlier, the fatalities kind of fluctuate pretty significantly over the years. With that forty four and forty seven, as I mentioned earlier, those are our big drops. I think forty four fatalities in 2014 was our lowest in a long, long time. But this is just showing you that our vehicle miles traveled doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as our fatalities do. Representative Tomlinson?

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: Thank you for this. Is there any way to access essentially this chart overlaid with crash data? I'm interested in the question that came up in the last session related to might the decrease in fatalities have to do with our enforcement or other efforts versus improvements in vehicle safety that have occurred over the past few decades? And you're talking about all crashes and not just fatal crashes. Right, right. So are there fewer crashes overall in terms of better adherence to the law and safety practices? Or is car safety improving such that when there is a crash, there are fewer fatalities, for example?

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: I can definitely pull some numbers for you. One of the things I will preface that with is that reporting has changed in my career for crashes. We are seeing a decline in actual reporting of crashes right now. We've been working with law enforcement for the last year to encourage them to send us everything, not just injury, serious injury and fatal crashes. There's definitely some feeling about those minor crashes that they aren't necessarily needed to be sent in. So we're trying to get them to report more of those crashes, whether it be working with their database to pull the data out or to have them physically fill out a crash report and submit it through our web based crash reporting system. How do I say this? So when I started, we were dealing with paper. We had three years backlog. We went to a web based crash reporting system. We changed the crash report form to a uniform form, which meant they had to get rid of a short form and a long form, and we went to one form. We got up to about 14,000 crashes a year. That has declined pretty quickly since COVID. I know I just sat through your last session. And there's definitely some things going on with law enforcement. So we've been trying to get back out there to say. Last year, we sent a joint letter that was signed by our Secretary of Transportation and the Commissioner of Public Safety to encourage law enforcement to report more crashes. Based on statute. There is no damage limit, things like that. So we are trying to get that number. So it's hard to tell you exactly how many actual crashes are occurring on the roads unless they're reported. So we only work with the reported ones, unfortunately. Thanks.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Representative Pouech. Yeah, thanks. And thanks for telling us the challenges you have with collecting data so we don't automatically make decisions based on a line when there's something behind it. And it's great that you've been doing this for such a long time. I'm also very curious, it's been brought up now a couple of times on if we just measure fatalities, anecdotally we know our cars are way safer and our roadways, I would hope, are safer. And so I imagine on the national level, this has got to be being looked at and saying, hey, how much of the improvement is attributed to safer cars, safer roads, and to give us a real idea on level of fatalities or the causes of accidents that are

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: driver cause or other reasons. I actually have a couple more slides that will talk a little bit about the national trends as well. So hopefully, that'll answer most of your questions. Obviously, there are NHTSA and FHWA, NHTSA National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Safety Administration. They're both working on that type of work. There's also all of the insurance companies are always doing studies around that as well. So I can't speak necessarily to that. I was the FARS analyst for Vermont for ten years. FARS is the fatality analysis reporting system. And that's where all of our fatal crashes get reported into the federal government. That's a huge data set. Every state has a FARS analyst and FARS data. They take that and also do a lot of analysis with that data. They're looking at a lot of things that we may not necessarily get we may not collect in our crash report. We do a lot, as far as analysts, to try to get some of that information. A lot of the things that you're talking about with cars, don't necessarily we don't have that on our crash report. So that's where we need to update our crash report form. That's that's definitely on my list of things to do because we don't have anything where it says, oh, they had lane assist. They had automatic braking. Those are things that our cars are now coming with that isn't necessarily collected. And I know in some of those cars, can turn that off. And it would be wonderful to know in some of these fatal or serious injury crashes if somebody turned those things off and then was involved in a crash. So they're doing a lot of work around that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. You're welcome.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Thank you. Are you also, I'm assuming, gathering data about the question of the sake of the home, and in what locations, where the accidents are occurring. So for example, in our religious and town towns, for example.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Yes, we do a lot of mapping of the crash data. I did not put a map in here for you today. We do look at that. They look at high crash locations. I walked in just as Lieutenant Sheld was talking about high crash corridors for commercial trucks. I've been involved with them a little bit on that. So we definitely work with other groups on different things like this. But we also do our own. I can show you a couple of things at the end, if I have time. We do have a website where we have a ton of data. And then we also just uploaded our 2024 crash story map, which does have a bunch of maps in there to show you some of those locations. So quickly, the five year average fatality rate. So with the VM for the vehicle miles traveled, we then can calculate a fatality rate based on the miles traveled. These are showing, again, these are five year averages. So it's trying to smooth that out. Even by smoothing that out, we're seeing both of these fatalities and serious injuries trending up.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: So

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: the next slide is our national information somebody asked about. So again, the blue line on top is the national fatality rate. So all of the fatalities across the country taken with the country's vehicle miles traveled. And then Vermont is the green line below it. So we do trend with national rates, but we do stay below them, thankfully. Well, that's mostly what I wanted to say about that. But I know that there is an interest in Vermont versus the country as a whole.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm sorry.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I'm just a little confused. If you go back one chart This one? No, the next one back. That's showing an increase in the rate. That's the rate of, let's say fatalities per, it doesn't say how many miles, but the amount of miles, And then if I go to the next page, it's going down.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: So correct that confused. So so this is our our annual rate versus our five year rate. Okay. Right. So we do that five year average. So the five year average for 2024 was 0.99 because that's taking the last five years and coming up with the average. So as you can see before 2024, those annual rates are pretty high. So if you take those together and divide by five, you're gonna come up with a slightly higher than 0.82. Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You're welcome.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: So I wanted to talk a little bit about our fatality rates versus New England states. Again, I was asked this in Senateran, so we pulled this together the last few days. Hopefully, you can see it. I tried to make Vermont the solid line. So we're purple. Maine is orange. New Hampshire is green. And then Massachusetts is blue. I was even surprised when I pulled this together the other day how low Massachusetts fatality rate is. But then their serious injury rate is much higher. So that was a surprise to me as I pulled this together. We do trend kind of along the lines of New Hampshire pretty closely on both fatalities and serious injuries.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Everybody can get lost in data and churn. I'm sorry. I just find it amazing that the 'twenty one to 'twenty two to 'twenty three, the other states have the exact same, and we don't follow that at all. So the relationship to these other New England states seems completely arbitrary.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: It does feel that. But I'm always asked, how do we compare to our neighbors?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Massachusetts is incredibly low.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Yeah, that would be really

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: They live.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: I'm sure that they have a higher vehicle miles traveled than we do. Their fatalities must be lower. Okay. I want to get away from some charts for a minute. So last year, I don't think I came to House Transportation Committee, but I shared this with the Senate trans. So I wanted to show you 'twenty '3 to 'twenty four, we saw decreases in overall fatalities, impaired fatal crashes, unbelted fatalities, and motorcyclist fatalities. As a note, the motorcyclist fatalities, the sixty seven decrease was because we went from eighteen percent in 'twenty three to nine percent, I believe, oh, sorry, six percent in 2024. So it was definitely a big drop. That 2023 number was a huge anomaly. We don't normally see that many motorcyclist fatalities. So I'm sharing this because the next slide is where everything changes. From 'twenty four to 'twenty five, we see a very different set of data here. Now, will say these numbers, again, for 2025 are not final. We have some things we're still waiting on. But our fatalities increased by three percent. That is a difference of two people. So some of these are what we would call small numbers again. Impaired driving, it's a difference of six people right now, again, waiting on eight crashes and their toxicologies. The unbelted, we increased by five percent, a difference of one percent. I think Lieutenant Ravlin earlier showed you guys a chart of of those numbers. Speed, that was a difference of seven people. So or seven crashes. So we went from twenty twenty seven to 20. So that was a decrease. We talked a little bit about pedestrians earlier. There was talk about pedestrians earlier. We did see an increase from six to nine. And then motorcyclists, we saw an increase. So we went back up from six then to nine this past year. Doctor. Burton?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, just regarding when it's sort of shocking, see that tobacco facilities, fatalities went up fifty percent. But as you said, it's three people. Three people. But I suppose it of weighing in circumstances.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Some of them are. Some of them, as Lieutenant Rutland talked a little bit about, our pedestrian fatalities, they're all over the place. There's no rhyme or reason to some of them. Several of them are older people that were just out

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: for a walk. We also

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: have some that were in dark clothing, dark at night. And then there's also the added piece of impairment. Some of our pedestrians or bicyclists are impaired. Some of our drivers are impaired. So there's a lot of factors that go into these.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: When you looked at, probably it was around 2013, there were four pedestrian fatalities in my town on state roads. This is Raul Brattleboro, yeah. In the aftermath of that a group was founded, now called Brattleboro Coalition for Active Transportation, sort of working to make improvements to their safety. But as you say, I think one of them was somebody crossing into our clothes, is it,

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: you know, it's I remember those crashes. Yeah, pretty traumatic. It is, it's always traumatic for communities when they lose a person. Thank you for your input.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Just a quick question. When we see these drastic changes, percentages going up or down, does that affect our monies we get from the federal highway for safety? When we see a big increase, is it easier for us to get maybe more money for patrols or whatever it might be, enforcement?

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: That is a really good question for the State Highway Safety Office.

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Yeah, so we might be looking

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: at it. Okay, all right, yeah. So Matt's with the wrong person.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Yeah. I don't work with the money. They use a lot of the data. State police is only one of my many data users. So I'm going to drop into, as Lieutenant Alvin talked a little bit about the different contributing circumstances, I'm going to talk about a couple of those here, just kind of dig into them a little bit. Our percentage of fatal crashes where a driver was impaired dropped a little bit last year. We're seeing, even without those eight crashes in 2025 yet, we're still looking at almost sixty four percent of our fatal crashes where there was at least one impaired driver. I do break it down a little bit more than that, just trying to look at whether it's just alcohol or alcohol combined with drugs or just drugs in here. And again, he already talked a little bit about the difference, how we've gone from It's not just alcohol anymore on the roads. There's a lot more drug activity.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So if you're going to die on Lott Highway, two thirds of the people that do are impaired?

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Not two thirds of the people, but two thirds of the fatal crashes involved. Not necessarily the victim,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: but some impairment was involved in two thirds of the crashes. Crashes.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: So when we look at fatalities, there could have been an impaired crash. There could have been multiple fatalities. So that impaired driver could I feel like I've seen it all, and then the new year happens and something else happens. But could have an impaired driver just minding their own business, shockingly, and get hit by somebody else who's impaired. Now you have two impaired drivers and then both are killed. That's still one impaired crash. That makes sense.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And at the same time, you might have found an impaired driver, But speeding also may be the cause, the immediate cause of Many

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: of our impaired crashes involve other pieces that we'll talk about. Unbelted, speeding, distracted. It could be anything. Unfortunately, they sometimes hit many of the categories. So unbelted fatalities. So I wanted to show this too because we have been showing some increases. We showed a decrease last year. 2025, we're showing another increase back up. Not since 2019 have we been below fifty percent of our fatalities that should have been wearing a seat belt but chose not to. And the trend line shows that we're just overall trending up over the last ten years in that category as well. Seat belt use, I stole this from the State Highway Safety Office's annual seat belt use survey. Again, this is all because the Senate trans asked me some questions on this. So how does Vermont look compared to national? So Vermont is the blue line. National seat belt use is the orange line. Where we stay consistently below the national average here since 2012. And then the other question, again, back to other neighboring states in New England, shows whether or not there were a seat, what the seatbelt law was, primary or secondary. New Hampshire has none. It was interesting to me. We are at the top of all of the secondary or none states. So we're doing better than the other secondary states. But primary states are all doing better than us as far as their use rates.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: In case Maine has a seat belt

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: oil? Did they change that?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I don't know. I didn't. I thought for a long time they didn't have a seat belt lock.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: No, I believe they've always had a seat belt lock. I think they called back their helmet law not too long ago.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Do mean you don't have to have it, or you have to have a helmet?

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Don't believe you need a helmet.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I haven't needed a helmet for a while,

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Okay. But I

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah. It's funny that helmet law doesn't exist, the seat belt does.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: I'm always surprised by states calling back laws like that, but protect their So just another piece of effort to kind of go along with that comparison factor for us versus our neighbors or nationally. From someone? Just to make sure I'm reading your chart correctly, states that

[Unidentified Committee Member]: issue a citation for not wearing a seatbelt, so it's a primary offense, I'm not using the right language, have significantly higher usage rates. And right now, Vermont, it's a secondary offense, more good, well, five, six, 7%. Yeah. So maybe suggesting that if we were to change our seatbelt law, we might see a higher percentage of users.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Is that a That a could fair assumption. Thank you. All right, and then I promised I would share just a quick, and I don't know how much time I have, so I'll be very

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: What you're taking for then?

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Sorry, Justin.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Take all the time.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Yeah. Take all the time? All right. This does take a second to pop up. It's got a lot of information in it. It's got some, I won't say pretty pictures. But one of my data analysts, Tonya Miller, put this together for 2024. It's just a summary again. So we're going to be working on 2025 as soon as we can get more crash data in. I won't go through the whole thing. There's a lot of information in here. I encourage you to stop by our website and take a look at this if you're interested. But it does talk about how often crashes occur. So we do some calculations here. So 20 crashes every day, one person dying in a crash every six days in Vermont currently based on our numbers, Who's crashing? Why they're crashing? Where and when? So back to the map piece, I think somebody had asked about. So just showing some of our pretty charts and graphs and some good

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So it's not I was able to click it. I see it on my computer. It's not on our screens.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry. Do I have to I am so sorry. I didn't look behind me when I reshared. Let me fix that.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I think it's not opening.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: No, I think I have to reshare my screen.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's fine.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, have a quick second there. I didn't announce earlier, but the presentations from earlier today aren't on our page yet, but they are in progress. And everyone's working. Megan, they should be there. I won't say exactly when, but they will be there and available to you. It's just not there yet.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Thank you for sharing. So I was saying that there's a lot of filled in information in here. So it's not just charts and graphs, but some explanation in some of the analysis that we've worked on for the 2024 data. There is, if I can get further down, there are some maps. Somebody had asked about that. So I want to kind of try to get to where, actually. And let me just do this. Where are they crashing? We've done some really great mapping work. Again, it takes a minute to load. Very blurry. It's not going to help you, is it? Just

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: give it a second, maybe. Let's see. Oh, there

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: we go. Okay. So this is showing crash rates for each of the counties. So you'll be interested to know, or not surprised to know, that Chittenden County is one of our highest. And then we also have Lemoyal, Bennington, and Windham Counties that are showing that high-four 10 crash rate based on their VMT for their county. And again, we've broken that down in a bunch of different ways with different maps. So again, just with time crunch, I would encourage you. It is in my presentation that I will share with you all. And the links are all

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: in there for that, along with our website, all kinds of stuff on there as well. Well, may have to so given by the amount of interest in the committee, we very likely will have to Yes, spend some time on this at some point. But unless there's a final question, we're going to cut into we did had to got a little bit behind, and we'll move it over. Mandy, thank you very much. Appreciate all of your work and service to the state overall, those quarter century plus.

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: Yeah, it's hard to believe some days.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Don't slow on your way

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: home. Always.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's okay if you stick around. Are happy to have you as long as you'd like to stay.

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Mandy, were supposed to introduce me as a rock star as well. Oh, that's awesome. Well,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Jesse, we've seen you in committee before. The state police did not particularly point you out, which sometimes a good telling and a bad thing. There's specific

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: reason for that. It could

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: be good and bad that state police didn't mention you. That's little scary. We like to have a little bit of levity, but we do want to continue on our highway safety theme for today. She And knows Jesse is up and running. Safe Systems Manager. There we go. Alison Flaim is also with us from the Governor's Highway Safety Council.

[Alison LaFlam (State Highway Safety Office Administrator, VTrans)]: Did

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I say it wrong?

[Alison LaFlam (State Highway Safety Office Administrator, VTrans)]: I'm from the Trans State Highway Safety Office. Properly known as the government for the

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: safety purpose. Okay. Catch that?

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Yes. No, Jimmy. Yes, go.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Sort of a follow-up, so every state has someone in your position, is that correct?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Correct. Yes. Welcome. Thank you. Well, good morning.

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: My name is Jesse Devlin, and I am the manager of the safe system section at the Vermont Agency of Transportation. I know many of you around the table from past testimony, but for those of you who don't know me, I've been with the agency about twenty three years. The majority of that, about twenty one, has been in the design art. So as an engineer, a project manager, and program manager of paving roadway and traffic improvement projects. I've

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: been

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: in this role for about a year and a half, and our team is comprised of a safety engineer, the state highway safety office, and also our active transportation. So my goal for today is to really kind of follow-up on what Mandy provided and to also kind of set the stage for your conversations as the programs come in and talk about the specific improvements and accomplishments and such. So I think this fits really well. And I don't know if anybody knew it, but the conversation that was occurring in the last testimony regarding safer vehicles and behavior fits into the safe systems approach. And basically, this is an approach that really recognizes that our network is large and it's complex. And it works by, you know, really building multiple layers within a transportation network that helps to reduce fatalities and reduce serious injuries. And when crashes occur, it helps to minimize the impact that they have. It really promotes a safety program that focuses on infrastructure behavior, responsible oversight of industry and the transportation community, and also emergency response. So the safe systems approach is really comprised of principles and objectives. And I think of principles kind of as overarching kind of a guiding framework that we should really be thinking about in all that we do at the agency and all that we do as drivers and users of the transportation network. So these include statements like death and serious injuries are unacceptable. So we need to prioritize improvements that can minimize that. We need to recognize that humans make mistakes and there are things that we can do within the course of design and education that can mitigate bad choices that people can make. It needs to recognize that humans are vulnerable and design and manage roadway systems in that manner. Responsibility is shared And this is important. It says that government design, users of the network, advocacy groups, plays a role in highway safety. Safety is proactive. So we're looking at safety from a perspective of looking at trends and ensuring that the investments that we're making are aligning with the data and redundancy is crucial. So this kind of goes to those multiple layers and saying that if there is a component of a transportation network that fails, there's something else that has to back and helps to protect users of the network. The objectives on the other hand, while principles were more kind of those guiding principles that you would think about within the course of the project, the objectives are what we are trying to achieve. So we're looking to have safer people and that means we're mitigating behavior and choices and really considering kind of those education pieces. Safer roads where we're designing and constructing improvements that follow the data and work to implement safety improvements on our network. Safer speeds, we heard from Mandy in terms of how speeding influences fatal and serious crashes and looking to ensure that our designs enforce and and enforcement complement speed concerns. Safer vehicles, there are continuous technological advances that are occurring and, you know, those contribute to the safety of our network. And also post crash care, so ensuring that when there is an incident, there is a way for emergency services to access the site and to be safe while they are there.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Pouech.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Thanks for this. And I don't know if those are in any particular order, but just sort of looking at it, number two safer roads. And I've made this argument before in this committee. First of all, we do a lot to make our roads safer. And there are some roads that need adjusting. But sometimes I see roads get redone and really in my mind, it's encouraging faster speeds. And so there's that sort of give and take there. And so I would put speed up above safer roads. I have a report from Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. I don't know if you're familiar with that national group.

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: I haven't seen.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And they look at crash data and they look at all that stuff. And when they look at here are things that you can do, they don't talk about necessarily safer roads. They talk about getting better restraints for people, getting better laws that get people into seat belts. They talk about using more automated law enforcement technology that other operators are doing because they see that brings down crashes. So I'm not dissing the safer roads because I think our roads, there are intersections and things that need to be safer. Keep looking at how people behave and when that behavior turns into speeding and disregarding laws, those are the two pieces and that's the piece these advocates are saying are the ones to really go after. And the post crash care, I mean there's no question that's important but that's not the root cause. We can improve that forever. We're not gonna fix the problem.

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: So just to That was a soapbox. Well, no, it's good, right? Because it does illustrate how all of these elements work together. And I will say that this is not necessarily a ranking of the objectives here. But to use your example, I'm just going to give a quick tangent. Allison probably pumped her fist over there. But a quick tangent regarding the safer roads and safer speeds. I get the descriptions provided, but I'd also say that those work together. A project that makes improvements on a roadway can implement changes that could influence speed. So it could be the opposite way that from the way you described the scenario that you saw, where different elements can influence a lower speed. So there is that balance, but there is that companionship of these objectives that is what we're really trying to work forward and implement with the safe systems approach.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, well, that's a good example. There are things you design the road to slow people down. Yeah, fair

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Yeah, absolutely. They all work together to try to get to that finish line, that end goal. Thank you. So the safe systems approach is really a data driven approach to reducing fatal and serious injuries. And the agency recognized a desire to better integrate safety considerations and to really all we do into planning and design efforts. And like I said about a year and a half ago, we reorganized a little bit with the agency and created a safe system section. So this is located within the operations and safety bureau, and it includes our intelligent transportation systems, traffic signals, traffic operations and mobility, as well as Mandy's team, the data management. And the safe systems in particular again brought together a traffic safety engineer, the state highway safety office, and active transportation unit onto one team. And our primary goals when we were initiated was to really kind of leverage the relationships we had within the agency and external to, you know, kind of build and improve the safety culture within the agency. We wanted to develop processes and tools to better incorporate safety within all phases of project development. We wanna better be able to evaluate the improvements that we do put on the street and how those are actually working in real time. Our team serves as the active transportation resource for the agency. And as Alison will talk a little bit later, we really wanted to align behavioral efforts and infrastructure, which hasn't necessarily been done historically. So as I know this committee is well aware, the primary program within the agency that had safety related projects from the Traffic and Safety program. And really the projects that are included within this program have a focus on safety and mobility and the funding within that program really funds three primary phases of a project. It funds the engineering phase or the design, the right of way acquisition, which is essentially purchasing any rights or easements that are needed for a project, and the actual construction of a project. The types of work and projects that are included within this program are things like traffic signals, intersection geometry improvements, roundabouts, signage upgrades, and pavement markings. And as I know it's hard to see, but the bar chart kind of reflects the budgeted amount for this program over the last three state fiscal years ranging from about just under 46 and 23 and just under 51 and 25,000,000. So embedded within the traffic and safety program is the highway safety improvements program and this is essentially the core federal aid program that's working to realize that reduction in fatalities and serious injuries. And this money primarily funds infrastructure improvement projects. And it's a data driven process and decision making initiative where our team is reviewing all of the data that Mandy was talking about. It's looking at the location where the crash has occurred, the roadway type and characteristics, the crash characteristics, and also the behavioral factors. And we're working to identify specific trends to select safety countermeasures that would be applicable to implement across the system. And I know you asked a question about funding and how that fluctuates. And with regards to HSIP, essentially, Federal Highway gets a single pot of money for the country for HSIP. And they break it up by state based on a formula a formula that looks at, lane miles within the state, vehicle miles traveled, and fatalities. So the funding does fluctuate from, you know, fiscal year to fiscal year, but in my time, I have not seen significant swings in terms of the dollar amount. So I guess where I'm going with that is I haven't seen huge jumps of funding that we've received on the HSIB side.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So that 20% increase we really don't anticipate?

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Correct. It's dependent on both our state but also what the rest of the country is doing as well. So you saw the trends as well from Mandy's spread in slideshow where everything is increasing as well. So I think if it was a pocket where it was just us, we might see a little bit more of a change. But if it's the nation is kind of progressing at the same rate that we are, then it's very small fluctuations that we'd see in funding. So within the highway safety program, the improvement program, there's multiple types of projects. So we have site specific projects which are projects that are identified to address a specific deficiency at a specified location. And typically these have been selected based on crash history And historically, these are the the most common project that we've seen in the traffic and safety program. And these includes, like, those site projects, like roundabouts or traffic signal installations or upgrades or the addition of a turn lane or realignment within an intersection. On the other side, we have systemic projects, and these are more the implementation of widespread improvements to address crash types. And these are more proactive based on the trends and aren't necessarily reactive to the location of a crash that may have occurred. So examples of this are we started up a local HSIB grant program, which really looked to bring some funding to the local roadway network because we are seeing a lot of our fatals and crashes on the rural network. And our focus for this grant has really been on lane departure. So we're looking we're providing towns and municipalities the opportunity to apply for grants for warning signs for curves or intersections, clear zone improvements. That's where we're essentially removing fixed hazards from adjacent to the roadway. Guardrail modernization, edge line markings, as well as crosswalk markings and centerline rumble stripes. So this is really an opportunity to get some funding to that rural network, the local network, which historically has been a challenge on the safety side. Additionally, another example of a systemic type project is our high risk rural road project. So these are a similar scope as the grants in terms of lane departure focus and we're looking at a lot of the signage and such, but these are more these are larger statewide contracts that are looking more at a corridor basis as opposed to, you know, specified locations. So again, know that the programs will be coming in, but, you know, looking at our agency's mission and vision, safety is a key element and it is embedded within the work that really all of our programs perform. And design projects, we've gotten to a state where a lot of these elements are natural within the course of project design, which is a good thing. And, you know, we're looking to and we are implementing improvements to clear zone and roadside topography, pedestrian infrastructure, guardrail improvements, the installation of centerline rumble strikes, traffic signal back plates, shoulder improvements, and investigating the option for road diets. So that's a very quick overview of kind of where we are at in terms of the safety program on the infrastructure side. Looks like you have

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a question.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Can you explain the road diet? Is that narrowing the road?

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Yeah. So for an example here, it's not necessarily narrowing the road, it's repurposing space that you have. So for example, example of a road diet was on three zero two, the Berry Montpelier Road, where if you were familiar with the area previously, there were two lanes, two through lanes in both directions. And it's probably about ten plus years ago now, we repurposed the space we had to have a bike lane and buffer for some of for most of the lane, one through lane in both directions and some center turn lanes and areas. And it's essentially repurposing the space for the intended use and feel of the court.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, is it possible to repurpose, you're looking at the right of way, the whole right of way, right, when you are looking at this, so would that afford opportunities to narrow the travel way and capture some of the right of way for, let's say, a curb and a sidewalk and things like that?

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: It could. So the road diets that we've performed have come through our paving program and I'm sure you'll hear this, but the paving program has some limitations in terms of the scale of work and it's generally constrained to the pay surface that is already out there. So the road diets that we've implemented have really been focused on edge of pavement to edge of pavement. I think what you're talking about is more of kind of a repurposing of the right of way as a whole, right? And that is a type of project. It's probably a little bit larger of a scale than the road diets that we've performed to date, but, you know, that is consideration and design.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you for this testimony, appreciate it. Talking about some of

[Alison LaFlam (State Highway Safety Office Administrator, VTrans)]: these

[Unidentified Committee Member]: projects that you all are working with towns on, it sounds like a lot of it is based on they'll get support and money if there is evidence that these are dangerous areas, and there's crash data. What about the towns that are trying to be proactive and offensive? And I speak for the Matador Valley, we have several select boards who are really concerned about traffic on Route 100, pedestrian crossings. They've had some interaction with AOT, and because we don't have crash data to support these areas that they want to make safer, they're really not getting the support they need. And we also have a big project envisioning a pedestrian bike path going through our whole valley. How do get support for that before we have accidents?

[Jesse Devlin (VTrans Safe System Section Manager)]: Yeah, so there were a few questions there. So I'm talking back to the local safety grant. So that is open to municipalities and that piece is more about the countermeasures. And it's not a requirement to meet a certain crash threshold or anything like that. Those are basically allowing the municipalities to identify areas that are bigger safety concerns for the community and implement change at those locations. And those are a smaller scale dollar amount. So I think what you're talking about is kind of that next stage up. And one of the pieces that we're really working on within our group is the development or procurement of a network screening tool that will allow us to really take all of the available data behavioral, predictive, all these elements, and really be able to compare apples to apples when there is a concern from a community or a region and be able to compare that against what we're seeing for trends and safety data and also what we have for available funding. So, you know, that is coming, but I I do know that you know, with regards to the path, I know that our team is included in the reviews and scoping, and I just encourage kind of that continued partnership. Alright. So that touched on the infrastructure side, and I think it gives you a good kind of starting point as the programs come in. Sorry. Just wanna be mindful of time and what else we have left to Yeah, I'm I'm passing it off right now. So just thinking back to that safe systems approach, what I just talked about was kind of the safer roads and the behavioral piece and safer people is an absolute important companion to that. And I'm gonna kick it over to Alison LaFlam, who is the lead of our State Highway Safety Office, to talk about some of the initiatives with that.

[Alison LaFlam (State Highway Safety Office Administrator, VTrans)]: Good morning. Alison LaFlam, State Highway Safety Office Administrator for the Record Etrans. We work in the State Highway Safety Office, where we write the annual grant application and the Highway Safety Plan to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to receive funds for behavior change. So we can't use our money for infrastructure projects, but like Jesse mentioned, we go hand in hand and we really need to work together in order to reduce the fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways. So we make data driven decisions with all of the information from management teams, we work closely with her, and we have performance based countermeasures in our highway safety plan. And because of the decline, I put links to these plans. So we have a three year highway safety plan coming up that we are currently drafting, which will be for fiscal years '27 through '29, as well as every year we submit an annual grant application where we have to put every project, including our own, so not just the money we pass through, but the money that the state uses to implement our projects and programs. We have to have it all in the annual grant application and approved by NHTSA by August 1 of every year. And then we write an annual report, and so we are currently drafting up and we're about ready to submit that annual report here by the January. But I did include links for the 'twenty four report, which was the last final year. A question came up about money. So we are a formula grant, and we receive the majority of the time, we receive, like Jesse said, with Federal Highway and HD money. It's usually around the same amount every year, fluctuates slightly. However, there is one fund called the four zero five E, which is the distracted driving fund with MidSev. They have some parameters in there about the law, which Vermont does qualify for that funding. I believe we receive the most amount that every state gets the same amount in that fund, I believe. And we receive that money because we're eligible because of our state law. The majority of their funding, though, we have to meet performance metrics and show that we have a problem, and then they look at our VMT and we become eligible because we have already received their funding. So just some highlights on the programs that we have because our partners throughout outstanding work. The Vermont Principals Association uses our grant funds to bring victim testimony and education on distracted driving and impaired driving to high schools and middle schools across the state. Middle schools is something we added within the last year and a half. Very proud to go down to that level instead of just focusing on driver's ed and above, trying to get them before they get to the driver's ed level. The Vermont Highway Safety Alliance, which is a non profit that we are a member of, has engaged families and communities on the importance of buckling up at community events. So we have control of the rollover part, that rollover, along with a second truck body rollover. So we wanted to make this highly visible to go after those 18 to 34 year old males that show up in our data who routinely are not buckled up in their fatalities. So we wanted to get them there by showing them a truck body rollover. We have the car body. These two vehicles travel all over the states, coordinated by the Chittenden County Sheriff's Office to use statewide. As well as this was the first year that we purchased driver simulators for Rutland City School District. And so those simulators are used in the tech centers there and the high school. One thing we have found by going out and talking to the public is that we need to be in technical centers in addition to high schools. Our distracted driving highlights: we have our law enforcement who do our April put the phone away or pay mobilization, and this year they had contact with approximately 1,500 vehicles. For impairment, this past summer, the state took part in the very first NHTSA assessment for DRE, Drug Recognition Expert Standard Field Subscribing Testing, Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement assessment with NHTSA. So I believe we were the first states to do that. We voluntarily did that assessment with the police academy, and our office supported that with funding, and we were part of it. And so we received recommendations in that assessment, and we will be working towards making improvements to the DRE program. As well as V TRANS, notice that we had several partners asking for PBTs, preliminary breath testing devices, from our law enforcement partners last spring. Instead of waiting until this spring to get those out, we did a bulk purchase of 200 PBTs, and we have been distributing those statewide to our partners. As well as we supported the forensic lab with the Department of Public Safety by helping them with funding so that they could update the DMT, the Demomancer terminals, and nearly 100 law enforcement officers keeping DMT certified or supervisor certified for the Forensic Lab. Our DriveWell Vermont, hopefully many of you have seen that. We have been putting our heart and soul into this campaign and branding for the agency. We have an updated media library. We invested funds so that all of our partners, the public, can go to our website, easily find our social media skills, our videos, our PSAs. All of that information is in a well weighed out media library. We launched a Slow Down, Move Over campaign this year. We had a Share the Road campaign, active transportation, to make sure that all road users, that communication, we're in this together, let's be safe together. Everything from highlighting Amish in wagons to pedestrians to motorcyclists, all road users were in that messaging. As a result of our motorcycle assessment, the Vermont Rider Education Program campaign launched to try to get new instructors to the program, as well as to get new riders to go through the program for motorcycle break. Mandy mentioned the data jumps, that was part of our reactionary efforts to try to drive down motorcycle members. As well as we have tool kits that have been created on the drywall site for our law enforcement partners and education partners so that when we do NHTSA mobilizations each year around the NHTSA communications calendar, we have toolkits and materials for all of our partners to use and that they can put out on their socials things of that nature. And then lastly, the new activities for 2026. So Mandy mentioned the higher range of impaired driving fatalities. NHTSA has designated us a mid range impaired driving state for alcohol five year moving average, which is just above 30% their threshold. We have implemented a statewide impaired driving task force. We meet quarterly with multiple members of the state, And we are building an action plan to try to bring down those members. The DUI Honor Patrol with the VHSA, which is funding that we do for its immobilization on impaired driving, we served with three families who agreed to have their loved ones who they had lost, highlighted a story about them, and that was presented to law enforcement to give them the why are they out there doing the enforcement that they're doing. In the EDIT program, which is part of the DRE program, which is focusing on employer program. There was a green mob that took place in November with the DRE program, which was funded by our member organization of the Governor's Highway Safety Association, a new program called the Brattleboro Adult Academy. So it's for adults for new Americans to learn how to safely drive. And so they've got supplemental funding from us. Project Yellow Dot, which is to try to keep older drivers safer by having the information in their glove box about their medical information. Beth was saying, post crash care, these are new things that we have not done in the past. We implemented that approximately a year ago and keep building that with the Vermont Department of Health. I know we're pressed for time, so I don't. My apologies to that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: There's something interesting about the media pieces that are available, the amount of things that are on the website. Sometimes I think we should have an entire presentation on all the

[Mandy Batney (VTrans Data & Analytics Manager)]: tools that

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: are out there so that we could share with our consumers.

[Alison LaFlam (State Highway Safety Office Administrator, VTrans)]: Yeah. Rachel Noyes from our office has presented nationally at lifesavers conferences. We would be happy to have her come in. Thank

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: you very much for rushing through it. My apologies. It sounds like we'll have to revisit. And it sounds like there's certainly some interest there. And we're back at 01:00. I'm sorry. I'll probably make that a little bit closer to 01:10 today.