Kansas, Missouri leaders focus on crash prevention, not cleaning up after | Opinion

For decades, Congress has treated roadway safety the way too many drivers treat a warning light on the dashboard: Ignore it until something breaks. Federal transportation policy has largely followed suit, funding response over prevention and leaving agencies to document tragedies rather than avert them.

That’s why the Modern Analytics for Roadway Safety or MARS Coalition is encouraged by the direction of the BUILD America 250 Act and the leadership of Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who worked alongside Kansas Reps. Sharice Davids and Tracey Mann. They all deserve credit for advancing a more proactive approach to roadway safety that treats prevention as policy, not aspiration.

The BUILD America 250 Act, passed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week, incorporates key provisions from the Roadway Safety Modernization Act that Reps. Mann and Davids championed. Those requirements help state and local governments identify risks before crashes occur rather than reacting after the fact. The bill earned bipartisan support, a sign that data-driven safety has moved beyond partisan framing.

For most Kansans and Missourians, roadway safety is not an abstract policy debate. A dangerous rural curve, a poorly marked intersection — these are known hazards in communities across both states, recognized long before any crash report documents them. They form patterns. And with the right tools, they’re preventable.

This legislation modernizes how transportation agencies understand and address those patterns. By encouraging the use of aggregated, anonymized data and predictive analytics, the bill allows states and local governments to identify dangerous conditions earlier, prioritize proven safety interventions and make better-targeted investments before crashes occur. Instead of waiting for a fatal crash to justify action, agencies can rely on forward‑looking data to guide improvements such as better signage, targeted roadway fixes and safer designs.

Importantly, the data needed to do this work already exists. It is generated anonymously and in aggregate by the vehicles we drive and the devices we carry every day. Until now, federal policy has not done enough to deploy that information responsibly. The BUILD America 250 Act changes that by providing legal clarity and flexibility for states to use modern technological tools while maintaining strong privacy protections. That balance matters. Innovation works only when it earns public trust.

Reps. Davids and Mann have been consistent voices for bringing roadway safety policy into the modern era, ensuring that federal programs empower states to act before crashes occur, not just clean up afterward. Their leadership helped ensure this bill funds safer roads in every community.

Chairman Graves also deserves recognition for embracing a bipartisan approach and incorporating these forward‑looking ideas into a comprehensive highway bill. By doing so, he has helped set a new baseline expectation for federal transportation policy: that preventing crashes should be the goal, not simply responding after lives are lost.

Safer roads don’t happen by accident. They happen when policymakers are willing to learn from what the road is already telling us and act before lives are lost. The BUILD America 250 Act is an important step toward building a smarter, more proactive transportation system.

Andrew Rogers served as deputy federal highway administrator and chief counsel at the U.S. Department of Transportation. He previously served as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He is managing partner of Boundary Stone Partners and executive director of the Modern Analytics for Roadway Safety Coalition.