Strategic Goal: Continually improve highway safety.

Strategic Objective: Reduce the number of highway-related crashes and their consequences (fatalities and injuries).

Performance Goal: Reduce the rate and number of highway-related fatalities and injuries. (In FY 2001, FHWA will reduce the rate of highway-related fatalities to 1.5 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled; and we will reduce the rate of injuries to 113 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.

In seeking to achieve the overall US DOT goal regarding numbers of fatalities and injuries by the year 2008 [33,500 and 2,809,000; respectively], we are setting an FY2001 benchmark of reducing the number of highway fatalities to 39,809 and reducing the number of highway injuries to 3.14 million.)

Highway-related crashes, injuries, and fatalities take a heavy personal toll on American families and cost the Nation’s economy more than $150 billion annually. An estimated 41,611 Americans died in 1999 and over 3.2 million were injured as a result of motor vehicle crashes.

Vehicle travel is expected to grow at approximately 2.2 percent per year while truck vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) is expected to grow at an annual rate of 2.4 percent. Lane mileage has increased less than ½-percent per year in recent years, which means more and larger vehicles will be competing for limited road space. In addition, the highest risk population groups—older drivers and drivers aged 15 to 24—will grow at faster rates than the overall population.

While many improvements have already been made, the safety community needs to intensify its focus on the problems it attempts to address and the types of countermeasures pursued. To further reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities, attention must be placed on large target areas such as single-vehicle run off-the- road crashes, pedestrian/ bicyclist-related crashes, speeding-related crashes, and intersection crashes.

Strategies: The FHWA will seek to reduce highway fatalities and injuries by: 1) reducing the occurrence of crashes, and 2) reducing their consequences. The overall goal of reducing fatalities and injuries is an overall US DOT goal, which is shared among FHWA, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). FHWA’s programs focus on the infrastructure-related aspects of addressing this goal area, in addition to adoption of comprehensive safety management processes within State and local transportation agencies.

A major opportunity for reduced fatalities and injuries is the individual’s awareness of unsafe practices. These include aggressive driving (i.e., red light running, excessive speeding, speeding in work zones and tailgating); failure to use restraint systems properly (adult and child); and driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Overcoming a traditional highway development and operations resistance to address human behavior is a challenge.

• Promoting Safety Management Processes: In partnership with the highway community, FHWA will facilitate implementation of comprehensive safety management processes with Federal, State and local governments, Federal Lands Management Agencies, Metropolitan Planning Organizations and the commercial transportation industry. Safety management processes will bring together, in a coordinated approach, the stakeholders that affect highway safety. These stakeholders include members of the planning, design, construction, operations and enforcement communities, safety advocacy groups, and others.

• FHWA will work with our partners and stakeholders to develop information and analysis systems to better identify the causes of crashes and implement improvements to reduce the number and severity of crashes.

• Deploying Lifesaving Technologies on the Highways: The FHWA will identify and promote deployment of safety technology with particular emphasis on technologies that address high priority areas. Analysis of fatality and injury statistics indicate that priority attention to particular crash circumstances can help to focus limited resources to areas of highest payoff. These focus areas include run-off-road crashes, pedestrian and bicyclist incidents, speed-related crashes, and crashes related to intersections.

• Advancement of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies, especially involving the infrastructure and vehicle-infrastructure cooperative aspects of the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI) program will also be a key part of safety initiatives. The FHWA’s longer term safety strategy is a technology and human factors-based systematic approach to enhance the safety of the roadway, vehicles, and users.

• Focusing on Outreach and Partnerships: The FHWA will improve outreach to and partnerships with States, Industry and safety interest groups to improve voluntary compliance. Additionally, FHWA will continue to work on activities designed to change human behavior while using the roadway environment. The FHWA will join all the modal administrations in activities that increase the use of seat belts and reduce the number of alcohol-related crashes. These activities will be accomplished with departmental leadership from the NHTSA. The FHWA provides departmental leadership in activities to reduce the number of red light running crashes and the number of work zone and highway rail grade crossing crashes.

---

FHWA Home | Feedback United States Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration