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ii Traffic fatalities are a leading cause of death in the United States. Rural roads are especially hazardous as they account for 60 percent of all traffic fatalities in the United States. Three main reasons for the rural road problems are high speeds, low volumes, and reduced driver awareness. This is particularly problematic where these roads navigate through communities requiring reduced speeds. Drivers who aren’t alert and are driving too fast often miss the reduced speed warning signs and often don’t slow until after they have entered the community. Therefore, engineers must do something to the design of the roadway environment that alerts drivers of changing surroundings in order to improve the safety in these areas. This study uses a driving simulator to examine six innovative roadway transitions from rural driving environments to suburban driving environments in order to determine the effectiveness of reducing speeds. The treatments were all located at the fringes of the town in a section transitioning from a 55 mile per hour speed limit to a 35 mile per hou