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flewtopment of Road Segment Safety lmproveane:ntt- <br />After roadway segments were prioritized using the risk-based scoring as described above, the results <br />were reviewed and the list was shortened so the plan could focus on the segments that would see the <br />most benefit from safety improvements and eliminated erroneous results or locations reflecting <br />outdated information. <br />Road segments with a score lower than 60 were removed from consideration. Road segments that were <br />within the scope of current improvement projects or recently completed improvement projects were <br />also removed. Each accident report was examined for further details regarding the incident to further <br />identify contributing factors, driver actions, alcohol or drug influence, intersection related, and any <br />countermeasures already in place. The list of candidate locations was further reduced by eliminating <br />roadway segments where accidents were alcohol or drug related with no hazard at the site and <br />segments where countermeasures were already in place and or where no countermeasures would have <br />prevented the accident. <br />The remaining roadway segments were then evaluated for potential safety improvements. Safety <br />improvements that emerged from this evaluation included guardrail installation, signing, and additional <br />delineation at spot locations to prevent run off the road accidents, and various intersection <br />improvement projects. <br />Additionally the County has identified a need to address copious amounts of inadequate bridge railing. <br />There are a total of 268 bridge structures within Kittitas County, many of which have insufficient railing <br />or no railing at all. Because these observed hazards have a high potential for serious injury or fatal <br />accidents, Kittitas County has chosen to be proactive and include these locations in this safety plan to <br />prevent predicted future crashes. This preventative, systemic, risk-based approach is supported using <br />the FHWA Systematic Safety Project Selection Tool criteria, which states that a site can be identified as a <br />candidate for safety investment if it has multiple risk factors but no crash history. <br />Finally Kittitas County recognized a need to collect data to support a clear zone inventory for the entire <br />county road system. The effort to identify hazards within clear zone for the purposes of creating this <br />safety plan included utilization of a variety of tools, including Mobility, Google Earth, RoadViewer, and <br />field visits. Future safety improvement projects could be better identified using a more thorough clear <br />zone inventory targeting known hazard locations. For this reason a planning project has been identified <br />7 <br />