Winston-Salem’s Safety Innovation

CHARLOTTE — Winston-Salem uses an unusual approach for improving the safety of its streets that seems to be paying off. The city’s traffic engineers continue to collect data on accident-prone intersections for several years after a fix is made. In most states and localities, traffic engineers merely assume that a change eliminates any problems and do not monitor accident rates to see whether, in fact, changes did help, and if so, by how much. Forsyth County is the fourth-most-populous county and ranks fourth in registered vehicles and annual miles driven. It places only 12th, though, in the number of accidents, 25th in the number of accidents with injury, and 88th in fatal accidents.