HEART OF ALABAMA SS4A

ABOUT SS4A

Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) is a discretionary grant program funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) which funds surface transportation programs through the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2023 the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham (RPCGB) received an SS4A grant to prepare a Safety Action Plan for the six-county Heart of Alabama region (Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, and Walker Counties). A Safety Action Plan aims to provide a collaborative and data-driven strategy to reduce transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries.

View the Study Area

Why do we need a Safety Action Plan?

From 2019-2023, there were 183,705 crashes on public roadways in the Heart of Alabama region.
In that five-year period, a fatal crash occurred approximately every 53 hours.
A suspected serious injury crash occurred approximately twice per day.
Crashes within the Heart of Alabama Region account for approximately 25% of all crashes and about 19% of fatal crashes within the State of Alabama.
Alabama has a goal Toward Zero Deaths over a 25-year period.
Through collaboration we can explore and implement solutions to make transportation infrastructure safer for all users

A Safe Systems Approach for the Heart of Alabama

The Safe System approach is a coordinated set of strategies focused on reducing fatalities and serious injuries in the transportation system.

Foundational principles of the Safe System are:

Death and serious injury are unacceptable
Humans make mistakes
Humans are vulnerable
Responsibility is shared
Safety is proactive
Redundancy is crucial

Through education, collaboration, commitment, and innovation we hope to mitigate and prevent severe and fatal crashes in the Heart of Alabama region by implementing solutions to make roads safer, road users more aware, and match speeds to context.