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Safety Culture

Transportation Safety Culture is foundational to achieving zero fatalities and serious injuries on Colorado roadways. The U.S. Department of Transportation defines safety culture as “the shared values, actions, and behaviors that demonstrate a commitment to safety over competing goals and demands.” For Colorado, Safety Culture is embracing and championing safety at all levels and the public actively practicing and encouraging safe driving behaviors.

About Safety Culture

A culture of safety can take many forms, but most often, in transportation it manifests as organizational and public.

Organizational Safety Culture

An organization with a strong safety culture is one that proactively elevates the importance of transportation safety by integrating safety into every aspect of its programming and projects. In this case, safety is part of the planning, scoping, design and construction of all roadway projects and part of everyone’s role regardless of job title. A key component is strong support from executive leadership. Organizational leaders must champion safety programming and empower staff to explore innovative approaches to achieve safety goals and targets. Organizational Safety Culture best aligns with the work happening in the Safe Roads and Post Crash Care Emphasis Areas.

Public Safety Culture

Communities with a strong safety culture have a shared understanding of the risks associated with transportation and actively choose to practice safe choices while navigating the transportation network. For instance, drivers and passengers in these communities are more likely to voluntarily wear seatbelts, use child safety seats, or wear helmets while operating a motorcycle. They will also recognize that their own driving behaviors could negatively impact others and choose to obey traffic laws, slow down at work zones, drive the speed limit, reduce distractions and not drive impaired. Effective strategies to target public safety culture are being deployed through the Safe Driving and Safe People Emphasis Areas.

To reach zero requires a cultural shift within transportation organizations and communities. Ultimately, a strong safety culture means that any roadway death is viewed as unacceptable and everyone proactively makes safe choices on our roadways.

To assist with the implementation of the Safety Culture Emphasis Area, we have partnered with Montana State University’s Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC). They have worked with 19 other state Departments of Transportation to study effective strategies to cultivate a culture of transportation safety that will lead to significant and sustainable reductions in crash fatalities and serious injuries.

Additional Tools & Resources

Safety Portal

Find current safety statistics, read related safety plans, explore data dashboards and learn about our funding programs.

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