Appendix C

Click on a link below to jump to the next part of the report:

General Report Information
Executive Summary
Chapter One - Introduction
Chapter Two - Key Findings
Chapter Three - Common Safety Program Themes
Chapter Four - Recommendations and Implementation Strategy
References
Appendix A - European Contacts
Appendix B - Team Members
Appendix C - Amplifying Questions

AMPLIFYING QUESTIONS

The U.S. scanning study team is interested in talking to members of your highway safety community who plan and determine how, where, and when resources are applied to the area of highway safety. A discussion of the tools used to make these decisions is also of interest. The panel members would like to visit projects that have resulted from your highway safety programs, including projects that represent both successful and not-so-successful approaches and procedures. The following questions are divided into four categories to help focus our discussion.

1. Existence, content, and effectiveness of national safety goals and plans.
   1. What are your national highway safety goals and objectives? Do you have an implementation plan that indicates what strategies and funds are needed to achieve these goals and objectives? If so, how are they incorporated into the budgetary process? What performance measures do you use to evaluate the success of their implementation?
   2. How do you incorporate safety into the transportation planning and/or project development process at national, state, regional, and local government levels?
   3. How are national safety law changes established? Have you recently enacted or are you planning to enact any significant highway safety laws? Can local jurisdictions establish laws that are more stringent than the national version?
      

2. Decision-making processes and management policies and procedures used to prioritize engineering, education, and enforcement elements of highway safety.
   1. How has your country and organization changed its focus from reactive to proactive highway safety initiatives to, for example, reduce the number and severity of highway crashes?
   2. How do you determine the needed balance of engineering, enforcement, and education and public information highway safety elements? What factors are considered in your decision-making process? Do you believe your prioritization scheme works well? What improvements (such as analytical capability, data quality, etc.) do you see as necessary?
   3. What are the relative funding types and levels for the engineering, enforcement, and education highway safety elements implemented in your country?
   4. Do you use an integrated team approach (i.e., interaction of engineer, police officer, educator, public transit official, physician, etc.) to guide, determine, and implement specific safety strategies? Please indicate how this approach is structured and implemented, and provide some examples of successful project results.
   5. How do you consider safety in highway projects that are selected for reasons other than safety? For example, if a project is selected to address capacity issues, how is safety explicitly considered?
      

3. Resources, analytical tools, and legislative policies that guide and/or support highway safety decisions and engineering, education, and enforcement priorities.
   1. What methods are used in your country to identify sites and corridors in need of safety improvement, often known as high-crash locations or "black spots?" Specifically, what criteria are used to systematically review the roadway network and determine whether particular sites experience more traffic crashes than expected?
   2. Has your country established formal procedures to diagnose safety problems and identify appropriate improvements using the crash history or other information at particular sites to decide whether a potentially correctable pattern of crashes exists? Do you have accepted guidelines that show a direct link between specific crash patterns and appropriate countermeasures?
   3. Do you use formal economic analysis procedures, such as benefit-cost or costeffectiveness analyses, to decide which safety improvements to make at specific sites?
   4. Do you use a formal priority ranking system for candidate safety improvements to decide which sites should be improved first? What criteria are considered in such rankings?
   5. Describe the role of data in your analysis approach. Are databases for driver, vehicle, and crash information linked? If so, what reports are routinely generated using the databases?
   6. How do the political process and legal profession affect your ability to initiate highway safety programs? What type of legislative framework supports highway safety programs in your country?
      

4. Examples and results of successful highway safety programs that resulted from the decision-making process and/or agency integration and interaction.
   1. What have been the most successful engineering, education, and enforcement programs, actions, and improvements you have used to reduce traffic crashes and injuries? If money were not a constraint, what programs would you expand?
      Some areas of interest to the panel include:
      • Driver behavior (i.e., older and younger drivers, aggressive driving, seat belt use, non-attentive driving, and driving while intoxicated)
      • Fixed-object, run-off-the-road, and head-on crashes
      • Signalized and non-signalized intersection crashes
      • Non-motorist (pedestrian and bicyclist) and truck-related crashes
      • Emergency response strategies
      • Driver education and licensing requirements
   2. What organizational structure exists to complete highway safety functions and implement highway safety programs? Does the organizational structure of your safety staff allow easy interaction with other units of government?
   3. How do you achieve interagency and intra-agency cooperation in highway safety practices? How important is cooperation and coordination (and possible sharing of resources) among levels of government in your country? What methods have you used to coordinate and what type of coordination do you see as most important?
   4. Please describe the role of nongovernmental entities in achieving highway safety improvements. What types of relationships have been most effective and rewarding? What are the key success factors in these relationships?
   5. What structure do you have in place to work with other units of government and the private sector on the transfer and implementation of effective and innovative highway safety improvements (e.g., advanced safety technologies and devices)? Provide examples of these innovations.
      

Click here to return to the top of the document
or
Click here to return to the main page