WASHINGTON – The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) today announced five states, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia, have been selected to participate in a learning lab that will focus on state strategies to improve statewide data use and sharing to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries.
Traffic safety remains a pressing concern for governors and states across the nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that there were 37,461 traffic deaths in 2016. The number of traffic fatalities in 2016 was 5.6 percent higher than the number of traffic deaths in 2015, and follows the record increase in 2015, which saw the largest year-over-year percentage increase since 1966.
In an effort to improve safety for all road users, governors are focusing on sharing and analyzing traffic data that will help leverage resources and support cross-agency policy solutions. Through the learning lab, state teams will explore strategies to connect traffic crash and other related data across state systems and will develop and share high-level plans of action based on lessons learned.
NGA learning labs provide an opportunity for a small group of state teams to learn about the details of a state program that is successfully putting an innovative practice in place. The traffic safety learning lab will take place June 4-5, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
This is the second installment in a series of learning labs aimed at improving statewide data sharing to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities. The first learning lab took place Feb. 12-13 in Annapolis, Maryland.
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