The Challenge
Highway safety has traditionally been measured through lagging indicators — crash reports, fatalities, and enforcement statistics. These numbers are essential, but they only tell command staff what has already happened. They don’t show where risk is building before it shows up in a crash report.
Arizona DPS’s State Highway Patrol wanted a way to identify emerging risk earlier, and to make sure enforcement resources were being directed to where residents actually felt unsafe — not only where past incidents happened to occur.
The Approach
Through Zencity’s Blockwise resident survey, the Highway Patrol Division collected a representative sample of 14.5K+ responses between July 2025 and January 2026. Of those, approx. 12K respondents identified specific highways where they feel unsafe — giving command staff a representative, defensible view of resident experience across the state, rather than a handful of anecdotes.
Instead of treating the results as a one-off survey snapshot, DPS built them into a recurring review: resident-identified corridors, cross-referenced with the specific behaviors residents flagged, gave leadership a consistent picture of where — and why — residents felt unsafe.
What the Data Showed
- I-10, I-17 and Route 347 were consistently identified as the state’s least safe corridors according to resident perception— not isolated locations, but sustained stretches of highway.
- Residents described continuous segments (“I-10 between Casa Grande and Chandler,” “I-17 from Phoenix to Flagstaff”) rather than specific exits or mile markers — indicating the concern is corridor-wide, not tied to a single intersection.
- Speeding was the dominant concern by a wide margin, frequently paired with reckless and aggressive driving. On I-10 and I-17 specifically, speeding appeared in roughly 60–65% of related responses, alongside weaving, tailgating, and aggressive merging.
- The pattern held consistently across multiple survey cycles, reinforcing that this was a durable trend rather than a momentary spike.
Embedding Insight Into Command-Level Performance Management
Rather than sitting alongside traditional metrics as a separate report, resident sentiment data was incorporated directly into AZDPS’s Quarterly Command Performance Brief — reviewed alongside standard but lagging indicators like UCR/NIBRS data, crash statistics, and enforcement counts.
With the added layer of real-time online community feedback using Zencity Listen, AZDPS also gained insight as to if and where residents were complaining about traffic or speeding on certain stretches of highway on social media. Utilizing a new added source of tips and the ability to assess public sentiment in particular areas, it became easier to track recurring problems and whether resources needed to be moved around in real-time (and to where) for crash reduction- to reduce fatalities, increase arrests and/or enforcement.
That combination gave command staff a leading indicator: a way to see where residents were experiencing risk before it fully surfaced in crash data, and defensible evidence to justify where enforcement attention was directed.
The Outcome
With corridor-level, resident-backed data in hand, AZDPS command staff were able to:
- Prioritize sustained, visible enforcement across I-10 and I-17 corridor segments — particularly metro-to-rural transition zones and high-speed, freight-heavy stretches — rather than short-duration, localized operations.
- Frame enforcement communications around corridor safety and specific behaviors (speeding, aggressive driving), directly reflecting what residents raised.
- Bring resident-backed, defensible evidence into recurring command performance reviews — insight leadership can stand behind when explaining enforcement priorities.
The Impact
With representative and defensible resident perception data to shape operational decisions with confidence, AZDPS was able to measure the effectiveness of these decisions using crash data over time. The Arrive Alive Arizona initiative tracks year-over-year trends and shows a marked drop in deaths and an increase in arrests and citations since July 2025 when Blockwise launched – indicating a positive trend in enforcement efforts.
Between July 1-December 31 2025 and January 1 2026-July 1 2026, AZDPS increased its contacts on 1-10 and SR-347 by 37% and 20% respectively, with marked increases in speed citations (128% and 68%, respectively) and hazardous collision causing citations (115% and 52% respectively).
The Arrive Alive Arizona data is publicly available online and updated monthly, transparently sharing crash and enforcement data in a simple, clean format for residents.
“Zencity has strengthened the Highway Patrol Division’s ability to understand community sentiment and emerging concerns in real time. By giving District Commanders actionable insight to tailor how statewide operations increase public safety, Zencity helps ensure decisions are informed, transparent, and aligned with the safety priorities that drive our mission every day.”
– Lieutenant Colonel, Daven Byrd, Highway Patrol Division
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With Zencity, public sector leaders gather inclusive, timely, and actionable feedback from their community. We ensure that leaders navigate tough decisions by measuring resident needs, understanding priorities, and enabling confident decision-making for long-term impact.
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