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A look at crash fatality numbers and an update on work zone safety cameras · Talking Michigan Transportation

• 0:07
  Jeff Cranson: Welcome to the Talk in Michigan Transportation Podcast.
• 0:10
  Jeff Cranson: I'm Jeff Cranson.
• 0:11
  Jeff Cranson: Last week, we reprised a previous podcast that featured conversations about the spike in traffic crashes and fatalities during the pandemic, and new numbers from the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration showing that in 2025 those numbers trended in the right direction.
• 0:32
  Jeff Cranson: In this week's episode, MDOT COO Gregg Brunner talks about measures that can and have helped reduce crashes on state trunk lines.
• 0:41
  Jeff Cranson: Those are the roads under M.DOT jurisdictions, M routes, I routes, and U.S.
• 0:46
  Jeff Cranson: routes.
• 0:46
  Jeff Cranson: He also provides an update on implementation of safety cameras to curtail speeding in work zones.
• 0:52
  Jeff Cranson: This was authorized by bipartisan legislation signed by Governor Whitmer in late 2024.
• 0:58
  Jeff Cranson: Cameras have proven to significantly reduce the crashes and deaths of road workers in many other states.
• 1:05
  Jeff Cranson: We're hopeful that despite some obstacles, we can finally get those in place in time to help save some workers in Michigan.
• 1:13
  Jeff Cranson: Greg also previews National Work Zone Awareness Week, which is coming up April 20th and is a particular passion of his.
• 1:20
  Jeff Cranson: So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
• 1:23
  Jeff Cranson: Okay, again, I'm with Greg Brunner, who is the Chief Operations Officer at MDOT, and he's done this a few times before.
• 1:31
  Jeff Cranson: He's had a really busy day, but I appreciate him taking time to talk on the podcast.
• 1:37
  Jeff Cranson: Um we're recording on the same day that the governor kind of kicked off road construction season with an event to celebrate the project on M14 in western Wayne County.
• 1:48
  Jeff Cranson: Greg, uh what I really wanted to talk about, and I previewed it last week by setting up recordings from back during the early pandemic and when people started really speeding, and despite being fewer cars on the road, we saw uh crashes and fatalities especially go up.
• 2:05
  Jeff Cranson: Recently, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, came out with the numbers from across the country reported in by the various states, and we saw the numbers going in the right direction finally.
• 2:18
  Jeff Cranson: Um, talk about how that plays out in Michigan.
• 2:22
  Gregg Brunner: Sure.
• 2:22
  Gregg Brunner: Um, yeah, actually, NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, released that report last week.
• 2:28
  Gregg Brunner: And what we saw overall nationally was that traffic deaths fell up almost 7% in 2025 to about 36,000, which when you think about it, is still a huge number of folks we've lost on our in traffic crashes throughout the year.
• 2:43
  Gregg Brunner: But um, that has been improved since the pandemic when things really spiked.
• 2:47
  Gregg Brunner: So that gets us down to about the lowest number we've seen since 2019.
• 2:51
  Gregg Brunner: Um, the way they track it is kind of by a fatality rate where it looks at the number of fatal crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, which is a hard concept to understand.
• 3:02
  Gregg Brunner: But the way this looks, it's about 1.1 fatal crash per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
• 3:08
  Gregg Brunner: So the number of the entire public driving there.
• 3:10
  Gregg Brunner: Um so again, that's the second lowest ever on record with travel being up just a little bit, and kind of 15 three-quarters we've seen since 2022, where that number's gone down.
• 3:21
  Gregg Brunner: So we're lucky to see things are are headed in the right direction.
• 3:24
  Gregg Brunner: You know, we saw that large fatality spike in 2020, 2021 during the pandemic.
• 3:28
  Gregg Brunner: That appears that kind of fully receded now.
• 3:31
  Gregg Brunner: The one thing that still is alarming though is pedestrian and cyclist deaths, they remain quite a bit, quite a bit higher than we've seen before.
• 3:38
  Gregg Brunner: We refer to those as vulnerable roadway users or VRUs, which I might say that acronym kind of talking a little bit going forward.
• 3:46
  Gregg Brunner: But you know, one of the things we've really been trying to figure out is what's drove those numbers back down.
• 3:50
  Gregg Brunner: And you know, we're still doing some research from that standpoint, but there's a few key things um that have played a good part with that.
• 3:57
  Gregg Brunner: A lot of that's infrastructure and safety countermeasures that we've been able to put in light in place uh with safer road designs, um, those types of things, new vehicle technology that's out there, and a lot of new vehicles with lane assist or adaptive cruise control, those types of things.
• 4:12
  Jeff Cranson: Sounds like we need that technology for people who are walking or riding their bikes.
• 4:16
  Gregg Brunner: Yep, that would be helpful too.
• 4:18
  Gregg Brunner: Any kind of technology to keep people engaged in what they do.
• 4:21
  Jeff Cranson: So talk about we talked about the design a little bit.
• 4:23
  Jeff Cranson: Talk about that, what kinds of you know, subtle or not so subtle changes, knowing, of course, that everything comes down to the funding squeeze that we're still experiencing in Michigan and a lot of states.
• 4:35
  Jeff Cranson: Um, but we always say safety is a top priority, but some of these things cost money too.
• 4:40
  Jeff Cranson: So I don't know, put that in perspective.
• 4:42
  Gregg Brunner: Sure.
• 4:42
  Gregg Brunner: Um, historically, what we've always done is kind of looked at intersections or other areas where we've seen a high number of crashes and what we can do there.
• 4:51
  Gregg Brunner: Uh that mentality has shifted a little bit.
• 4:53
  Gregg Brunner: So we're looking more systemic on things we can do kind of across the entire system.
• 4:57
  Gregg Brunner: Um, whether it be the wider pavement markings that we're using, we're using six-inch pavement markings now on a lot of our roadways increased from four inch.
• 5:04
  Gregg Brunner: That helps driver visibility as well as um any vehicles that are seeing the road, autonomous vehicles or others to see that better.
• 5:12
  Gregg Brunner: You know, we've added rumble strips on a lot of our roadways, uh increased signing, those types of things.
• 5:17
  Gregg Brunner: But beyond that, we've also looked at some other crashes for like wrongway driving, those types of crashes that have been some of the most horrific ones we see on our roadways, where we get two vehicles traveling full speed head-on to crash on our roadways.
• 5:31
  Gregg Brunner: Um, we've made changes to a lot of those interchanges to add red reflective sheeting if you're driving the wrong way, additional arrows, additional pavement markings, lots of static enhancements just to make things better there.
• 5:43
  Gregg Brunner: But now we're kind of moving beyond static enhancements to what kinds of new technologies we can incorporate.
• 5:49
  Gregg Brunner: So, you know, some of those are wrongway driving detection systems that we've had throughout the state that have had seem to have good improvements.
• 5:57
  Jeff Cranson: That's what I was gonna ask you about.
• 5:59
  Jeff Cranson: Um, it's it's difficult to know how long a sample period you need to measure whether those things are really having an effect, but it it it sounds like we have reason to believe some of those wrong way driving technologies are are are at least making it dense.
• 6:16
  Jeff Cranson: Is that your understanding?
• 6:18
  Gregg Brunner: Yeah, based on what we've seen, at least from stats from last year, those numbers have gone down quite a bit for wrongway driving fatal crashes in the state.
• 6:26
  Gregg Brunner: So again, we're hopeful that a lot of those improvements we're doing, whether they're static or some of the new technology type, are having that impact, that people going the wrong way realize it and turn around, or those that are driving against them, we can get some kind of notification out that they slow down and are actually look potentially looking for someone going the wrong way on the freeway.
• 6:43
  Jeff Cranson: Can you imagine?
• 6:44
  Jeff Cranson: I I've seen that simulation, but I mean, can you imagine being the person driving on the freeway and getting an alert that somebody might be coming at you the wrong direction?
• 6:53
  Gregg Brunner: You know, that that would be tough to read, I think, but it would really raise their awareness.
• 6:58
  Gregg Brunner: I know, in particular, lots of these happen at night, and you can imagine just seeing headlights coming at you what that's what that's got to feel like when they're coming at you at 70 miles an hour or more.
• 7:07
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, that's pretty terrifying.
• 7:09
  Jeff Cranson: I know that uh there's almost always these are the result of people who are impaired um or sometimes you know very elderly.
• 7:18
  Jeff Cranson: And that goes into a whole nother discussion about the promise of automated vehicles and uh, you know, freedom of mobility that could afford to people who otherwise have to have their driver's license taken away.
• 7:29
  Jeff Cranson: Um, talk a little bit uh about what you think.
• 7:33
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, you said it really well at the beginning of this, like 36,000 is still a huge number.
• 7:39
  Jeff Cranson: Um, it's hard to celebrate, but when you look at spiking, you know, as much as 10% or more of that during that pandemic period, getting back to pre-pandemic numbers um does feel like a good thing.
• 7:52
  Jeff Cranson: You know, talking to your friends at the Office of Highway Safety Planning and at the Michigan State Police, do you think that there's enough of a concerted effort by everybody to get those numbers down even further?
• 8:04
  Gregg Brunner: That's our goal when you start looking at um what's going on in Michigan.
• 8:07
  Gregg Brunner: We do have a strategic highway safety plan in the state of Michigan.
• 8:11
  Gregg Brunner: And what that was put together by a group of multiple agencies, uh including Amdot, the State Police, Office of Highway Safety Planning, uh, Secretary of State, Department of Education, and others, it kind of looks at as a team, how do we reduce roadway fatalities in Michigan?
• 8:28
  Gregg Brunner: And what that's really aimed at is what's called a safe system approach, um, which you know works on getting that number of fatal crashes down to zero.
• 8:36
  Gregg Brunner: Just in Michigan, as an example, last year, we still had over a thousand fatal crashes, which is below that national fatality rate that I had mentioned previously.
• 8:44
  Gregg Brunner: But still, as you know, a thousand people is a ton.
• 8:46
  Gregg Brunner: That's still a lot of improvement we want to do there.
• 8:49
  Gregg Brunner: But with that safe systems approach, it's kind of a multi-tiered approach where we've kind of changed the philosophy a little bit on trying to stop every crash from happening.
• 8:58
  Gregg Brunner: But knowing with this approach that unfortunately humans make mistakes.
• 9:02
  Gregg Brunner: So no matter what we do for many of these aspects, the crashes are probably still gonna happen.
• 9:08
  Gregg Brunner: But what can we do to kind of mitigate those from the fatal or serious crashes?
• 9:13
  Gregg Brunner: How can we kind of layer different topics um to keep those people in crashes safe going forward?
• 9:20
  Gregg Brunner: Um, you know, some of that's with the things I had talked about previously with safe railway users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, uh safe roads and post-crass care.
• 9:30
  Gregg Brunner: How can we kind of layer those to where things can happen?
• 9:33
  Gregg Brunner: You know, as an example, like I talked about with wrongway driving, we talked about both alerting people that are going the wrong way on the freeway, but also alerting uh police that there may be a wrong way driver and potentially vehicles that are driving that way to be along there may be a wrong way driver.
• 9:48
  Gregg Brunner: So it's not just one layer there, we're adding multiple layers together to hopefully reduce or mitigate any of those crashes when they do happen.
• 9:56
  Gregg Brunner: We will continue the conversation right after a quick break.
• 10:02
  MDOT Message: The Michigan Department of Transportation reminds you that when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, person, or other object, it is a crash, not an accident.
• 10:11
  MDOT Message: By reducing human error, we can prevent crashes and rebuild Michigan roads safely.
• 10:17
  Jeff Cranson: Our immediate neighboring states saw a similar decline between 2024 and 2025, declining fatalities specifically.
• 10:26
  Jeff Cranson: Um actually they were a little less than us.
• 10:29
  Jeff Cranson: I guess Michigan was a 7% decline.
• 10:31
  Jeff Cranson: But gosh, like Minnesota had like a 22% decline, and Wisconsin uh not as much.
• 10:40
  Jeff Cranson: But I just I wonder it'll be interesting when you and your colleagues who work in this have time to catch up with those other states to see what they're doing.
• 10:48
  Jeff Cranson: Um, I mean, have you heard of anything that's just really innovative out there that that we'd like to try but haven't been able to yet?
• 10:55
  Gregg Brunner: There are quite a few things we're looking at that we're implementing this year as well.
• 10:59
  Gregg Brunner: Uh, lots of those are tied to work zones.
• 11:01
  Gregg Brunner: And, you know, being this time of year in Michigan, that's when our work zones are really kicking off.
• 11:05
  Gregg Brunner: Uh, lots of new technology we can look to incorporate in those.
• 11:09
  Gregg Brunner: Um, one of the ones we really started using last year was just a cue detection system for work zones.
• 11:14
  Gregg Brunner: In advance of the work zone, where you have sensors out there that can tell when traffic is starting to back up as it enters in the work zone, that sends alerts on message boards to cars coming up before they get to those backups.
• 11:26
  Gregg Brunner: Just uh keep their eyes on the road that there's a queue ahead and they may have to slow down or stop, just to kind of avoid some of those horrible rear-ended crashes we've seen at some of those queues in our work zones.
• 11:37
  Gregg Brunner: There's those types of technology out there, but also quite a bit more.
• 11:40
  Gregg Brunner: Um, we are piloting a system this year in the state where we've upfitted about 100 MDOT vehicles where once they turn on their flashers or their bubble lights on the top, what that does is automatically sends a signal to a few OEMs, uh Volkswagen cars, Stalandis, others, um Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps, all those types of in-vehicle navigation that people use.
• 12:05
  Gregg Brunner: Let's specify that OEMs is uh original equipment manufacturers.
• 12:10
  Gregg Brunner: Yeah, one of the new technologies we've been able to incorporate this year in MDOT is uh we've up in about 100 MDOT vehicles with new technology where with Obbalite in their vehicles, once they turn that on um as they're entering a work zone or doing work wherever on our roadways, that sends out a message that is picked up by uh many vehicle manufacturers, Volkswagen, Stellantis, others, as well as navigation systems like Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps, those types of things, that once they flip that switch, it shows there's a work zone out there.
• 12:43
  Gregg Brunner: So vehicles coming up upon them know that there's a worker out there.
• 12:46
  Gregg Brunner: It doesn't rely on crowdsource data like those applications usually do.
• 12:50
  Gregg Brunner: Do little things like that.
• 12:52
  Jeff Cranson: Well, yeah, I was just gonna say the crowdsourcing, but the Waze and Google, which are probably the two most common, rely on.
• 12:58
  Jeff Cranson: Yes, you're right.
• 12:59
  Jeff Cranson: So you mentioned work zones.
• 13:02
  Jeff Cranson: Um, let's let's talk a little bit about that.
• 13:04
  Jeff Cranson: We've got the national national work zone safety awareness kickoff coming up uh in just a couple weeks, uh the the 20th.
• 13:13
  Jeff Cranson: Um anything new this year?
• 13:14
  Jeff Cranson: I know this is a particular passion of yours.
• 13:16
  Jeff Cranson: You're the only person I know with an orange suit.
• 13:20
  Jeff Cranson: Um talk about why that's so important to you and what uh you know what might be new um as we go into this year's construction season.
• 13:28
  Gregg Brunner: Sure.
• 13:29
  Gregg Brunner: Um, so what National Work Zone Week is, is where many of the kind of traffic control providers, contractors, departments of transportation, other jurisdictions uh that participate in work zones, how we really focus on safety for that week, not only looking at lessons learned from the past year, but what we can do in the upcoming year, and more or less just to raise awareness for folks that once they are driving down the road, if they do encounter a work zone, just slow down, keep your eyes on the road.
• 13:56
  Gregg Brunner: Um, and again, people are out there working.
• 13:58
  Gregg Brunner: I know I've been out on the side of the roads quite a bit with people going a few feet away from you, 70, 80, 90 miles an hour.
• 14:04
  Gregg Brunner: Um, so just imagine if you're trying to do your job with those things going on right behind you, how dangerous that could be.
• 14:11
  Gregg Brunner: So, again, just a reminder for everybody to slow down in those work zones.
• 14:15
  Gregg Brunner: Um mentioned new technology too.
• 14:18
  Gregg Brunner: Those are the things we'll be talking about uh during this week as well, some of the things we want to roll out statewide.
• 14:24
  Jeff Cranson: So, speaking of technology, um after a huge push and mDot advocated for this, and so did the laborers and the operating engineers 324, the the folks that run the real heavy equipment to help build roads and bridges, as well as uh some bipartisan lawmakers who sponsored the legislation that the governor signed last year to finally get safety cameras in our work zone so that we can monitor speeding and try to do some enforcement to get people's attention.
• 14:57
  Jeff Cranson: It's been very successful.
• 14:59
  Jeff Cranson: I've talked about it on the podcast with folks from Illinois.
• 15:02
  Jeff Cranson: Um, it's it's made a big difference there in Maryland, Pennsylvania, some other states.
• 15:08
  Jeff Cranson: Um, we ran into a bit of a snag because it was included in some work projects that were um halted uh in the legislature.
• 15:17
  Jeff Cranson: But you seem uh committed to trying to move this forward one way or another.
• 15:21
  Jeff Cranson: Is that right?
• 15:22
  Gregg Brunner: That's correct.
• 15:23
  Gregg Brunner: That's one thing we still want to move forward.
• 15:25
  Gregg Brunner: Um, beyond just the funding standpoint, we're working through kind of the administrative side of things because this does, it doesn't just touch on MDOT, it touches on quite a few other state agencies um in terms of that citation side.
• 15:39
  Gregg Brunner: So kind of at a high level for those that hadn't heard about these before, we're looking at work zone safety cameras where um more or less it's a trailer out in the work zone to aimed at people speeding through the work zone that would issue citations if they are going above the prescribed speed limit through that work zone.
• 15:56
  Gregg Brunner: Um, so what would happen is I think it's a tiered approach to those where the first time you would just receive a warning, but then the costs associated go up, or if the number of citations you get increases, there's no points associated, but again, it's just to have people drive safely through the work zones is what the entire goal of this is.
• 16:17
  Gregg Brunner: It's not aimed at kind of a money-making campaign or anything else.
• 16:21
  Gregg Brunner: In my ideal world, if we were to implement this technology, we would write zero technology uh citations because everybody's driving safely through the work zones.
• 16:30
  Jeff Cranson: And I'm glad you made that point because that came up a lot in discussion about the legislation and that always there's that skepticism that this is just uh a revenue generating concept.
• 16:41
  Jeff Cranson: And I think, like you said, everybody said it in their testimony.
• 16:45
  Jeff Cranson: Uh, the various labor groups, um, you know, MIT of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, which lobbies on behalf of the contractors, everybody to a one said what you just said, that in an ideal world, we'd never have to have a citation because everybody is following the proper speed limit through these work zones.
• 17:03
  Gregg Brunner: Yeah, and that's that's like what our hope is.
• 17:05
  Gregg Brunner: And judging by what other states have seen in this capacity, they've seen a significant drop in work zone speeds towards compliance.
• 17:13
  Gregg Brunner: So, again, that's that's what the overall goal is, um, to be able to work that way so that everybody at the end of the day can go home safely.
• 17:20
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, like everything, um, you don't know until you get into it uh, you know, what the various obstacles are gonna be and the hurdles that'll have to be overcome.
• 17:29
  Jeff Cranson: But Lindsay Renner and Jason Gutting and Ken Zimmer's area at MDOT are are committed to making it work.
• 17:36
  Jeff Cranson: And I know that they're they're having to overcome a lot of obstacles, but they're staying with it, so that's good.
• 17:42
  Jeff Cranson: Is there anything else you want to say uh as our chief safety advocate uh about these topics?
• 17:49
  Gregg Brunner: No, it's just you know, I want to continue to encourage people to drive safely through the work zones no matter what they're doing.
• 17:55
  Gregg Brunner: Our work zones are even on our roadways every day.
• 17:57
  Gregg Brunner: I know it's easy to be distracted by your cell phone or to drive a little faster because you want to get somewhere, but at the end of the day, I just ask everybody to focus on getting where you're going safely.
• 18:07
  Gregg Brunner: I know when I looked at kind of the the number of fatal crashes we had in Michigan last year, almost a third of those were involved people not wearing seatbelts.
• 18:16
  Gregg Brunner: So, my one piece of advice I give to everybody I talk to is no matter where you go, please do me a favor, just wear a seatbelt so you can get there safely.
• 18:24
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the seat belts because that was a a huge factor, I think, in the number of fatalities and why, even with fewer cars on the road, um, crashes and fatal crashes went up during that period.
• 18:37
  Jeff Cranson: And the state police told us that not only were people driving faster, many of them decided to quit wearing seatbelts.
• 18:44
  Jeff Cranson: And um, there's probably myriad reasons for that, but that's just really disturbed me.
• 18:49
  Jeff Cranson: So I'm glad you mentioned that.
• 18:51
  Gregg Brunner: Yep, one easy safety fix that everybody can do to help us out.
• 18:55
  Gregg Brunner: Big picture.
• 18:56
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:56
  Jeff Cranson: Well, thank you, Greg, for talking about this.
• 18:59
  Jeff Cranson: And as always, uh, you know, I really appreciate um what a great spokesperson you are on this topic and your passion for it.
• 19:07
  Jeff Cranson: So thank you.
• 19:08
  Jeff Cranson: Thanks for having me, Jeff.
• 19:10
  Jeff Cranson: Stay safe.
• 19:11
  Jeff Cranson: I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation.
• 19:14
  Jeff Cranson: You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout.
• 19:19
  Jeff Cranson: I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, and Jackie Salinas, who posts the podcast to various platforms and transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.