Highway Safety

J-Tech helps drive the highway safety message to Capitol Hill

The J-Tech team engaged virtually with US congressional members and staff during ATSSA’s (American Traffic Safety Services Association) Legislative Fly-In to convey the importance of road safety and infrastructure improvements.

The J-Tech team joined over 100 other ATSSA members in attendance from 25 states who held 54 virtual congressional meetings with US Representatives, Senators, and their staff.  Preston Denlinger and Fred Bergstresser met virtually with
members of congress and congressional staff to articulate key roadway safety
infrastructure industry issues; in particular, the need to reauthorize the FAST
ACT and provide continued and increasing funding to the Highway Safety Improvement
Program (HSIP) with the message that the HSIP funds can only be used for
infrastructure safety projects and not “flexed” to other uses.  The need for congress to provide a secure
long term funding solution for the Highway Trust Fund through an alternative user-fee
based funding solution was also communicated. 

The team asked for support of the American Jobs Plan which
includes $20 Billion for road safety projects, $8 billion of which would be for
HSIP. Support was also asked for HR 2481, the High Risk Rural Roads Safety Grant
Program Act which provides a competitive grant program for local governments
with $600 million annual funding. Deaths from crashes on rural roads far
outnumber those on Interstate highways making this an important issue to
address.  Our goal is safety; to attain this nationally, we need to
focus on federal funding to help us have a system of roads that are safe,
reliable and that create a more competitive economy. 

Additional information can be found HERE.