Yesterday, in the mail, I received an invitation to attend a Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) Summit. The SHSP is mandated by the new SAFETEA-LU act, and is related to a program who’s goal is to make significant progress in reducing highway fatalities. The summit, which is being held two weeks from yesterday (3/9) in Ontario, appears to be a meeting to discuss safety issues. Looking at the agenda, there are two main breakout sessions:
Breakout Session #1 (concurrent workshops for 5 SHSP topics)
Workshop 1 – Walking and Bicycling: How to make walking and street crossing safer and ensure safer bicycle travel in California.
Workshop 2 – Vehicle Safety: How to improve motorcycle safety, make truck travel safer, and increase safety enhancements in vehicles.
Workshop 3 – Emergency Medical Services: How to enhance emergency medical services in order to increase survivability.
Workshop 4 – Reducing Impaired Driving: How to detect impaired drivers on the California roadway and prevent impaired driving.
Workshop 5 – Improving the Design and Operation of Roadway Intersections: How to improve the safety of intersections and interchanges. (Full) (drat)
Breakout Session #2
Workshop 6 – Curbing Aggressive Driving: How to curb aggressive driving, keep drivers alert, increase driver safety awareness, increase seatbelt usage and improve airbag effectiveness.
Workshop 7 – Reducing number and severity of Run Off Road collisions: How to keep vehicles from leaving the road, and minimize the consequences of leaving the road.
Workshop 8 – Design Safer Work Zones: How to make work zones safer for travelers and workers.
Workshop 9 – Improve Decision Support Systems: How to improve data collection and information to the decision support systems to create an effective Safety Management System.
Workshop 10 – Driver Competency: How to ensure the drivers are fully licensed and competent and focus on improved competency for young drivers.
This is completely unrelated to what I do at work. I would need to take a vacation day to do it, and I would miss a conference steering committee telecon. On the other hand, looking at the invitation, it puts me in a select group and I might make some good connections. The cost is $30 (and includes lunch), and it would take me about 1.5 hrs to drive there, one way. So, I’m trying to decide: Should I do this?
What do you think?
Update: I mentioned this to my manager. He actually thinks it might be fun.
