 Trees do indeed enhance the experience of roadway users, motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. They improve the appearance of our neighborhoods and screen industrial and commercial buildings from view. They contribute a sense of permanence to a neighborhood, and their aesthetic appeal can increase the monetary value of real estate. They also serve more functional purposes. They improve water runoff, block the wind, soften glare, and in some instances can even act as noise barriers. Finally, they also provide a refuge for many local wildlife. However, as much as we value the benefits of roadside trees, they also can create unsafe conditions for drivers, their passengers, and pedestrians. No matter how safe the road surface itself may be, we cannot control people's behavior when they're behind the wheel. There are many distractions including weather or radios or cell phones that cause people to leave the road. And once they leave the road, it is a high probability that they will come to rest against a tree, a carpet, or another fixed object that can lead to serious injury or fatality. So all the impact, all the blunt force trauma is going to be absorbed by the person driving the vehicle. And that's where the organs of your body then strike the inside of your body because the inside of your body has slowed down to zero, but your heart and your lungs are still traveling. There's a really whole spectrum of injuries. You know, some people come in, aren't injured at all, and a lot of people come in and have injuries from head to toe. A lot of people have traumatic brain injuries. And it puts a big burden on these families and friends, you know, brothers, and sisters. We see here all the time young kids who come in severe car accidents with a lot of injuries and brain injuries. And you see, you know, 10, 15, 20 kids, you know, high school kids, college-aged kids who come in to see their friend who is essentially in a coma. You used to laugh with them and joke around, play games, and now he's gone. No more joking around with him, no more calling him up and saying, hey, you want to go do this, you want to do that. There's no more of that. He's gone. Whether by driver behavior, falling limbs, obstructed views, or by just growing too close to the roadway, each year over 3,000 fatalities involve car and tree interaction. Fatalities that are not always the driver's fault and include the innocent, both passengers and pedestrians. How do we balance the positive benefits of trees along our roadsides with the potential safety hazard that they can present? There's no simple answer. We have to evaluate each situation and look for the solution that causes the least amount of disruption while providing the desired benefits. Now, you may be asking yourself whether we can make changes that will have a significant effect. The answer is yes. In fact, I'm standing in front of a location where the appropriate balance of good engineering judgment and landscape design has ended a long history of deadly accidents. What we used to have here was a two-lane roadway, 10-foot wide travel lanes, no shoulder, ditch section, tree line. It was a problem with runoff the road crashes. What we did back here was actually design a proper curve, horizontal curve into this roadway, widen the roadway to three lanes, and actually move the edge of pavement away from this tree line to give a run-out buffer that would help preserve the trees. So we are working very hard to minimize the risk of a vehicle leaving the roadway by doing things like improving the shoulders, setting back ditches, removing fixed objects, hazards that a driver might encounter if they left the roadway, and in some cases that does involve either removing trees from the right-of-way or protecting trees as well as putting up devices that would protect the motorists. Many times, despite our best efforts to design trees into the right location, that location can become a bad location. The roadway can be wide and bring it closer to the tree and the traffic much closer to the trunk. In those situations, we can place a guardrail. It protects the tree and it protects the motorists. In instances like these, corrective action has had a beneficial effect. But how do we turn these instances into the norm and reduce the chance of a car tree accident? We need to acknowledge and become actively engaged in minimizing the risks. Part of the solution is a series of active safety awareness campaigns directed at the traveling public. Campaigns that reinforce safe driving skills and re-emphasize the importance of proper car maintenance. Every mile that you drive as a driver, you have hundreds of choices and decisions that you have to make. If you're talking on a cell phone, if you're eating a chili cheeseburger, if you're trying to deal with disruptive children in the backseat, obviously, you're not paying attention to the driving task. But beyond focusing on drivers and their vehicles, we must also address the roadway environment. We must acknowledge that it is under our stewardship and we are responsible for designing an environment that decreases the probability of a fatal accident. Which brings us back to the trees that have been planted and grown up along our roadways. Now you're probably asking yourself, why are we placing this heavy emphasis on trees? The answer is simple. Because trees, unlike other roadside hazards, are a living and growing element of the environment. And some grow to a size that turns them into a uniquely dangerous roadside element. It doesn't take a tree too long to reach a size where it's really an immovable object. When a car veers off the road and hits a tree say in the 4 to 6 inch diameter glass, you can be sure that tree is probably not going to move. Mature trees can also block the driver's vision. Young saplings that cause no visual interference when planted have the potential to grow into established trees whose large trunks or overhanging limbs can easily hide a car, a sign, or even a child running toward the street. It is also true that a sapling planted in the median strip does not take that many years to grow into a mature, immovable object. Finally, the trees in an urban forest follow a normal life cycle just like humans. They age, and if not properly cared for during their life cycle, they will weaken and become diseased. We're just beginning to understand the rhythms and requirements of properly managing our urban forests. Well, in general, the areas along roadways and highways have a confined growing space. So the trees are at a disadvantage rate from the beginning. And when we go out to inspect a tree, we try to determine whether or not there's a treatment. Can we prune the damaged limb and treat the tree as it stands? Or are we better off removing the tree and replacing it with a tree that's more suited for that space? Solutions to the problems we've been talking about do exist. But it's important to realize there are no quick fixes. No one-size-fits-all answers. In the long run, perhaps the major impact on this issue will be determined by how well we implement an ongoing, balanced, solution-based approach to good highway design, placement of new trees, and effective landscaping. When designing trees into the roadside environment, we're always working from a framework of safety. We want to improve the appearance of the roadside, meet the aesthetic requirements of our partners, but not at the expense of the safety of the traveling public. This is a 35-mile-an-hour facility. We have chosen to put the trees back behind the sidewalk for many reasons here. The first is that these trees will be quite large when they're mature, and this will keep them out of the clear zone. The second reason is that by giving them so much space, they will be healthier in the long run because their roots will have plenty of space to grow. We did plant some trees right next to the roadway, but in this case we chose species that would remain small when they were fully grown. You want to put the right tree in the right place. If you have a confined green space, you may want to plant smaller species of tree or even shrub species. Our goal is to beautify and enhance the roadside while taking into account the safety of the motoring public. I think when it comes to not just trees but certainly the settings of urban or more suburban highway improvements, we use an approach called context-sensitive design, which really is a philosophy that looks at all of the different things that may impact upon a proposed improvement. And certainly the emphasis is to try and preserve what's there that's significant, and that could be a tree in someone's front yard. It could mean making some design changes to help protect that tree or improve the chances of its survival. As we have shown throughout this video, roadway design is a complex issue, and each solution must be a unique balance of transportation needs and community desires. Partnering is key to what we do today. We've learned over the years that we really didn't have all the answers when we planned and designed highways. There are a lot of other interests out there, a lot of other concerns that we really needed to be aware of that we weren't. So we partner with individuals, community groups, motorists, a whole range of stakeholders, and the result really is that we end up with much better products than we had in the past. Without this approach of discussing it with local property owners and local politicians, it would be very easy for our program to be cut short due to public concerns and political pressure. When you can bring all of these diverse partners together, you can find much more effective solutions, share resources, and come up with out-of-the-box ideas that can bring a true solution to the particular safety problem that you're addressing. The best way to find the appropriate solution is for all stakeholders involved, whether interested citizens, community leaders, or highway professionals to work together. On each project, we must all learn to discuss design issues with an open mind and a willingness to hear and honestly evaluate other points of view, look beyond our comfortable stock answers to find solutions that will better serve the current project, and commit to finding the outcome that best balances the needs of all parties involved. If we do, we will find that working together, we can create a true win-win-win situation, one that works for our drivers, for our communities, and for our trees.