New Jersey Risk Map: An Innovative Tool for Reducing Car and Truck Accidents

A project of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (AAAFTS) known as the United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) may help deliver critical information about road safety in New Jersey. The idea behind the program is to create a Risk Map which gives drivers an instant visual image of which New Jersey roads have higher crash rates statistically than others. This information can be helpful when planning a trip or commute and looking for the safest routes. The risk maps may also be useful to city planners and road engineers in designing and building safer roads and improving existing ones. So far only eight states have had risk maps created during the three phases of the project’s existence, which included two pilot phases. New Jersey’s risk map was developed during a pilot phase.

In partnership with New Jersey DOT and AAAFTS, usRAP developed risk maps for the entire 2,800 miles of state highways and toll roads in New Jersey, as well as over 38,000 miles of public urban and rural roadways, divided up into 1,410 sections. The maps show that vehicles annually accumulate 41 billion miles of travel in-state, with an average crash rate of 2.55 crashes for every 100 million vehicles-miles of travel.

Supplementary risk maps show data for specific types of crashes in New Jersey, including speed-related crashes, alcohol or drug-related crashes, crashes involving older drivers and younger drivers, and crashes involving pedestrians. Hopefully this information will become popular and put to use by consumers and policy makers to reduce automobile and truck accidents in New Jersey and make road travel safer.