Eyes on the road - road safety audits

This post is geared to city engineers/public works directors, but please note everyone should be contacting cities about these issues.

Cities have a lot of staff, elected officials, and volunteers who drive their streets getting from point A to point B.  Typically, people are zoning out, often just listening to the radio.  This is a huge untapped resource.  Ten minutes of training and every employee of the city could be performing traffic audits for you.  Here are the top 10 things you should have them looking for (basically, everyone knows what is normal and when something stands out as not being quite right):

1. Trees blocking signs or hanging down onto walking paths/sidewalks.
2. Signs that should be replaced because they are faded or beat up.
3. Things on corners that block motorists views - hedges, trees, landscaping walls, signs, etc.
4. Burnt out traffic signal indications.
5. Street lights - burnt out bulbs, on during the day, off at night, etc.
6. Traffic backing up between intersections or spilling out of turn lanes.
7. Bad potholes or bumpy roads.
8. See people illegally running stop signs or signals.
9. A road where everyone is speeding.
10. Detours or construction zones that are wrong.

Turn everyone into an extension of your engineering staff.  You could even give an annual award to your most prolific reporter!