The Washington Traffic Safety Commission is a public agency that flies under the radar. In February, the commission got a new leader when Shelly Baldwin, previously the Legislative and Media Relations division director at the WTSC, was appointed head of the commission by Governor Inslee. Last year, the previous Director, Darrin Grondel, who had been appointed to the job by Governor Christine Gregoire in 2012, left to become Vice President of Traffic Safety and Government Relations at The Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility.

We sat down with Director Baldwin recently to get a better understanding of the Safety Commission’s role in improving traffic safety in Washington.

Seattle Bike Blog: I guess the first question would just be, tell me a little bit more about your background and how you ended up as the Director.

Director Baldwin: Yeah, you know, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be an astronaut, so I don’t know how I ended up here. I wanted to be a writer growing up, and when I became a grown up, I had a freelance writing situation going on and the commission began hiring me for many of their writing projects. That was back in ’92…So for many years, I enjoyed my association with the commission. I learned a lot about traffic safety, I wrote their grants, I wrote the first Target Zero plan. And then my daughter went to college and I realized I was going to need a little bit more of a steady income, and I was lucky enough to be hired on as a program manager. I took their impaired driving program as my emphasis area and worked in that for maybe seven years. And then as people retired, they asked me to do legislation and their communications, which I did for about seven years before our director, Darrin Grondel left and I applied for the position and I was extremely humbled to have been chosen for it. So that’s about twenty-five years in traffic safety.

Seattle Bike Blog: So you’ve been along for almost all of the Target Zero program.

Director Baldwin: Almost. So in 2000, the director at the time, John Moffitt, had come back with information about what they were doing in Norway, on their Vision, Zero piece, and he said to the team, I am not going to continue to set goals that maybe we can kill X number of people this year, which is 20 less than last year. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that that would be our goal. And he at that point implemented Target Zero, worked with all of the partners to bring them on board and honestly, everybody thought he was crazy for a little bit, probably including his staff…Like zero is never going to happen, why would we set that for our goal? But as we’ve existed in this world and watched successes in Norway, we really think that this is the only appropriate goal to set.

If you’ve seen it, but we do have a video out about why zero is the appropriate goal. It’s basically man-on-the-street interviews across the state asking people just basic questions, how many people do you think are killed in car crashes in Washington, and what do you think the leading causes are, what do you think an appropriate goal is. Most people say, well, can we kill ten thousand? They have no idea how many people actually die in Washington per year.

And then we say, well, what’s the goal for your family? And, you know, that gives them pause. And that’s where I’m at too. I certainly don’t want anybody in my family to ever be killed just because they’re trying to get from one place to another, regardless of what method they’re using. But more than that, there are actually things that we could be doing, if we would make the commitment as a state, to get us there.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the actual Target Zero strategic plan…It’s a big, big plan, but there are sections in there that talk about the most important things we could be doing to reach zero. And those are things that we will always be advocating for, even when they’re not popular.

Seattle Bike Blog: And so how do you describe the Safety Commission’s role in the statewide ecosystem?

Director Baldwin: That’s a really good question. The Safety Commission was formed back in 1967…The federal government required all states to have a highway safety representative appointed by the Governor. And that’s what this position is. There are fifty-four other people like me, who are the head of their traffic safety office and serve as that governor’s representative. But when we were formed, we were a little unique, so most states formed their highway safety office, either as part of their public safety statewide state patrol kind of office or under their DOTs. Washington however took a very different approach, recognizing that traffic safety is a multifaceted issue.

They made us a commission. So we have: the heads of agencies, including department of licensing, department of health, state patrol. superintendent of public instruction, a person who represents counties , a person who represents cities, a person who represents the judiciary…And they form our commission, which makes us super lucky. So we are a commission, we’re twenty-two people big right now. We could possibly be twenty-six people if we filled positions. And yet we’re tasked with eliminating all traffic crashes in the state, so obviously it’s not about simply what we can do. It really is about bringing those commissioners into the fold, letting them provide us direction and also providing them with what traffic safety professionals do and what we learn from the connections we have throughout America. And guiding and building partnerships, so we take charge of the Target Zero plan every three years, we bring all the partners to the table. We have a partners meeting to kick off that probably has, what was our last count, about 500 people that attend. So really, the best thing that we can do is organizing and bringing together lots of different professionals to help us reach our goals.

(more…)