Overview & Goal

The goal of the Advancing Safer Rural Transportation Systems student competition is to leverage data-driven insights to improve roadway safety and reduce serious injuries and fatalities in rural Tennessee. All teams will work with the provided rural crash data and seat belt use data from Tennessee. Teams may choose, but are not required, to use additional publicly available data to enhance their analysis or strengthen their recommendations. Examples include: U.S. Census demographic data.

As a team, you will analyze the provided datasets to identify patterns, diagnose safety challenges, and develop evidence-supported countermeasures. In doing so, you will draw on analytical skills and creative problem-solving to interpret key risk factors, and articulate strategies that could meaningfully improve safety outcomes in Tennessee’s rural communities.

Teams will complete the following components (methodologies and creative approaches are flexible):

1. Identify and analyze Tennessee’s rural crash patterns

• Use the provided crash dataset to pinpoint high-risk rural counties, corridors, or crash types.

• Explore contributing factors such as weather, time of day, driver behavior, roadway environment, or vehicle type—based on available fields in the dataset.

• Assess trends in fatal and serious injury crashes and examine where rural communities experience disproportionate impacts.

2. Examine rural seat belt usage and its relationship to injury severity

• Analyze seat belt use rates by geography, roadway type, demographic segment (if available), or crash circumstance.

• Identify areas with persistently low restraint use and evaluate how these patterns relate to fatal and serious injury outcomes.

• Discuss behavioral, social, or access-related factors that may influence seat belt use in rural areas.

3. Propose targeted strategies to improve rural roadway safety and seat belt compliance

• Recommend evidence-based approaches such as behavioral campaigns, enforcement strategies, technology solutions, partnerships with schools or community groups, or policy adjustments.

• Consider rural constraints (long travel distances, limited enforcement resources, cultural norms, communication barriers).

• Ensure recommendations are achievable and based on the data patterns you identify.

4. Estimate and justify the expected safety impacts

• Use data-driven reasoning to demonstrate how your strategies may reduce fatal and serious injury crashes or increase seat belt usage.

• You may incorporate basic statistical analysis, geospatial mapping, predictive modeling, or comparative benchmarks—based on your team’s preferred approach.

• Where possible, quantify potential improvements or explain the factors that would drive change.