Executive Summary

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), including Federal-Aid and Federal Lands, is promoting Road Safety Audits (RSAs) as a proactive process to reduce deaths and injuries on our nation's roadways. RSAs involve a formal safety performance examination of a road or intersection by an independent, multidisciplinary team, and they can be used in the planning or design stage, or for identifying and mitigating safety concerns on existing roads and intersections.

The FHWA Office of Safety, in partnership with the FHWA Office of Infrastructure, Highways for LIFE (HfL) team, FHWA Resource Center, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Technology Implementation Group (TIG), is working diligently to champion the need for RSAs. Toward that end, this marketing plan has been developed to implement a more effective approach to promoting RSAs to FHWA's customers.

The FHWA is working toward the following RSA goals to help the nation meet the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) goal to reduce the fatality rate to 1.0 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled by 2008.

Goals of this marketing plan:

• From fiscal year (FY) 2007 to FY2012, at least one RSA will be conducted per year by each of the three Division Offices of the FHWA's Federal Lands Highway Program.
• By 2008, training courses on RSAs will have occurred in all of the Opportunity and Focus states.¹
• By 2010, RSAs will be documented in all strategic highway safety plans.
• By 2012, RSAs will be considered on all projects that qualify for safety funding as determined by the agency's prioritization process. Generally, a national average of 10 RSAs will be performed in each state every year.

¹ Sixteen states, each with a fatality rate above the national average of 1.5, or with a fatality improvement trend over the past 5 years below that of the national average, were identified in 2003 as opportunities for comprehensive safety improvements and are called "Opportunity states." FHWA also identifi0ed several "Focus" states and cities, defined as those with the greatest challenges in the FHWA focus areas of roadway departure, intersection, and pedestrian fatalities. Focus states and cities have a fatality rate above the national average and/or are above a fatality number threshold for that category of crash.

This marketing plan describes the "corporate" FHWA philosophy, the "product" analysis (giving detail about what RSAs are), costs and benefits, the market (who the customers are and what they need), current market trends, challenges, the strategy for implementation, and identifies the team members. In addition, this plan discusses how RSAs can be effective in helping FHWA customers address locations identified as part of new reporting requirements in SAFETEA-LU, the availability of funding sources for conducting and implementing improvements identified in RSAs, and how RSAs fit into FHWA's Risk Management Initiative.

FHWA will reach RSA program goals by:

• Developing and implementing this marketing plan
• Forming an RSA implementation team
• Supporting the team's effort by continued funding of the RSA program to support training, technical assistance, and outreach/technology transfer

Appendices to this marketing plan show the difference between RSAs and traditional safety reviews, list the Opportunity and Focus states and cities, summarize RSA implementation experiences, discuss legal issues related to RSAs, and summarize available RSA technical resources.