Case Project: Highway Safety Improvements

David Weber, age 23, is a civil engineer in charge of safety improvements for District 7 (an eight-county
area within a Midwestern state). Near the end of the fiscal year, the district engineer informs David that
delivery of a new snow plow has been delayed, and as a consequence the district has $25,000 in
uncommitted funds. He asks David to suggest a safety project (or projects) that can be put under
contract within the current fiscal year.
From previous studies, David knows of two projects he believes should be completed as soon as funds
are available. Site A is the intersection of Main and Oak Streets in the major city within the district; Site
B is the intersection of Grape
and Fir Roads in a rural area.

Pertinent data for the two intersections are as follows:

Project A Project B
(Urban) (Rural)

Road traffic (vehicles/day)  24.000 6.000

Fatalities per year (3-yr average) 2 2

Injuries per year (3-yr average) 6 2

Accidents with only property damage (3-yr average) 40 12

Proposed improvement New signals with turn lanes Install signal

Improvement costs  $ 50.000,-* $ 25.000,-

* Federal government will match state funds for this improvement since Main Street is part of the
Federal Aid Primary System; hence, state will have to provide only $25,000.

A highway engineering textbook includes a table of average reductions in accidents resulting from the
installation of the types of improvements David proposes. The tables are based on studies of
intersections in urban and rural areas throughout the United States, over the past 20 years.

Urban Rural

% reduction in fatalities 50 60

% reduction in injuries 50 60

% reduction in Accidents with only property damage 25 -50*

* PD (property damage only) accidents are expected to increase because of the increase in rear-end
accidents due to the stopping of high-speed traffic in rural areas

David recognizes that these reduction factors represent averages for intersections with a wide range of
physical characteristics (number of approach lanes, angle of intersection, etc.); in all climates; with
various mixes of trucks and passenger vehicles; various approach speeds; and so on.

Finally, here is some additional information that may be useful.

(1) In 1975, the National Safety Council and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration both
published dollar scales for comparing accident outcomes, as shown below:

NSC NHTSA

Fatality $ 52.000 $ 235.000

Injury 3.000 11.200

Property damage 440 500

(2) Note that the ‘exposure to hazard” is significantly higher for the drivers entering the rural
intersection under present conditions.

(3) Individuals within the two groups pay roughly the same transportation taxes (licenses, gasoline taxes,
etc.), hence, the collective taxes for the drivers entering the urban intersection are four times as much
as for the group entering the rural intersection.

Questions

1. If you were the engineer, which of the two projects A (urban) or B (rural) would you select for
execution, and why? (Use the decision-making process to analyze the problem).

2. Is the result of no. 1 affects your ethical principles. Make an explicit statement what the
relevant ethical principle is that you (perhaps implicitly) had assumed in your own analysis that
was at the basis of your choice at question 1 above.

3. Decisions like this one on highway safety improvements are ultimately decisions on how tax
money should be spent. Do you think that in reality it is engineers who make or should make
such decisions? If not, who else should take such decisions, and what should be the proper role
of engineers?

4. Discuss the potentially detrimental effects that external subsidies (like the federal subsidy of
$25.000 for project A) may have on collective decisions if considered from the utilitarian point of
view.