Measuring Progress

While the ultimate goal is zero fatalities by 2050, Destination Safe recognizes the importance of incremental improvements.

As the Kansas City region’s metropolitan planning organization, Mid-America Regional Council is required by the Federal Highway Administration to track and provide annual safety performance measure targets for the below categories based on data from Cass, Clay, Jackson, Johnson (Kansas), Leavenworth, Miami, Platte and Wyandotte counties.

• Five-year average fatalities.
• Five-year average fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
• Five-year average serious injuries.
• Five-year average serious injury rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
• Five-year average non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries.

This section will review the historic regional data used by Destination Safe to determine the performance measure targets for the five-year life of this plan.

Both 2017 and 2020 experienced significant increases in fatalities which, along with overall high numbers, has caused a trend for both the fatalities and fatality rate to show slight increases.

Performance measure targets

We believe that an annual reduction is possible. As such, we have set aggressive but achievable targets based on gradually increased percentages of reductions.

Conversely, serious injuries have steadily declined in our region, a trend we hope to continue.

Performance measure targets

The current trend line for serious injuries and serious injury rate is a larger decrease than the gradual percentage decrease used for fatalities. Therefore, we will set targets based on the current trend.

Similar to fatalities, non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries have also been historically high, especially in the years 2018 and 2020. 

Performance measure targets

Again, we believe that an annual reduction is possible and will use the same logic to create targets based on gradually increased percentages of reductions.

Overall, Destination Safe believes that it is possible to achieve our vision of zero fatalities but without further supportive actions, our region will continue its trend of more lives lost. Our hope is that communities will expand their efforts and better prioritize strategies to improve the survivability of roads. 

A data-driven approach requires that data be varied, accessible, and up-to-date. This means that as a region, we must not only improve the regional crash data but also identify opportunities for supportive data. Together, these improvements can help create a broader picture of traffic crashes in our community.

Regional crash data

The primary source of crash data analysis is crash reports submitted by law enforcement agencies at all levels. The following list is additional ideas on how to improve crash data analysis and make it more easily available to partners.

• Improved data dashboard
  • Additional information such as helmet use, mode of transportation, and age of the driver
  • Data summaries by city
  • Additional contributing crash factors in map view
  • Identify high-frequency crash corridors and intersections in a map view
  • Crash location road types (road owners)
  • Downloadable data sets by jurisdiction (MPO)
  • Community input for safety priority locations
• Improved crash reporting through electronic submission and training (LE, DOT)
• Task force to identify key factors contributing to the sharp rise in speed-related fatalities (Destination Safe)

Other Data Sources

While crash data analysis is largely dependent on crash reports, it does not show the entire picture of traffic incidents. The following list of data sources and comparison ideas would help to obtain a better understanding of traffic crash fatalities and injuries.

• Moving violation citations (LE)
• Court data
• Traffic crash-related hospital discharge reports (area hospitals)
• Compare crash data with (MPO)
  • Activity centers 
  • Environmental Justice areas and/or social vulnerability index
  • School zones
  • Work zones
• ACS (American community survey, census)
  • Vehicles owned, commute distance/time
• Traffic and pedestrian volume counts
• Demographic data