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From Tech Transfer Newsletter
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California's Strategic Highway Safety Plan
By Ken Kochevar, Safety Engineer, Federal Highway Administration
Randy Warden, Safety Specialist, Federal Highway Administration
A National Overview
The 2005 Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act – A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) requires each state to develop and implement a Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). The SHSP must provide a comprehensive framework for reducing highway fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads.
A SHSP should strategically establish statewide goals, objectives, and key emphasis areas in consultation with federal, state, local, and private sector safety stakeholders. This comprehensive approach addresses safety problems on all public roads through both behavioral and infrastructure-related strategies and countermeasures.
California's SHSP: Development and Implementation
Approximately 4,000 lives are lost every year on California's roadways and nearly 54% of those fatalities occur on local roadways.
California has a large and complex road transportation system with 347,000 lane miles of roadways serving more than 36 million residents. The range of safety issues facing California's road users reflects not only the size of the state but also the diversity of its population and geography.
California's SHSP was developed and approved in 2006. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) partnered in this effort with the California Office of Traffic Safety, the California Highway Patrol, and the California State Association of Counties to lead a 13-member steering committee in providing guidance to 16 Challenge Area teams. The multidisciplinary teams are comprised of experts from the "Four Es" of safety (Engineering, Enforcement, Education and Emergency Medical Services), and are led by co-leaders who serve as champions for the SHSP and help guide the work of the Challenge Areas. The teams were initially tasked with developing SHSP goals and strategies to address the state's most pressing transportation safety issues
In May of 2008 Caltrans hosted Safety Summits in Northern and Southern California to introduce the 152 SHSP actions the teams developed and to discuss implementation. Workshop participants included representatives of state, city, and county agencies, private sector businesses, grass-roots organizations, and other key safety partners. In addition to the announcement of the action items, the Summits were designed to involve Safety Stakeholders from local agencies and other organizations in implementation and encourage them to join the current group of more than 300 safety stakeholders.
What are the 16 Challenge Areas?
Sixteen Challenge Areas are used to focus attention and resources on the major roadway safety issues facing California. The goal is that agencies will implement the actions in each Challenge Area to effectively reduce highway fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads.
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Reduce Impaired Driving Related Fatalities
Among all traffic safety issues, alcohol-impaired driving has perhaps the highest profile, and combating it has been vigorously pursued with aggressive campaigns in both the public and private sectors. Impaired driving continues to be a persistent traffic safety problem in California.
Major Focus: Increasing educational efforts, legislative actions, and enforcement.
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Reduce the Occurrence and Consequence of Leaving the Roadway and Head-on Collisions
One of the most severe types of crashes occurs when a vehicle crosses into an opposing traffic lane and crashes head-on with an oncoming vehicle. Severe crashes of this sort occur primarily on rural conventional roads and freeways with narrow medians.
Major Focus: Identifying where the problems are and implementing programs or engineering solutions to reduce the frequency and severity of these crashes.
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Ensure Drivers are Licensed and Competent
California research shows that drivers with a suspended license are almost four times as likely to cause a fatal crash as the average driver, and unlicensed drivers are about five times as likely to cause a fatal crash. In addition, some people continue to drive even though their cognitive and motor skills have declined to levels that make them unfit to operate a motor vehicle.
Major Focus: Increasing driver competency, enforcement and public awareness; improving educational efforts.
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Increase Use of Safety Belts and Child Safety Seats
California law requires all vehicle occupants to wear a safety belt. Car seats, when correctly installed and used, are extremely effective in saving children's lives. However, federal safety programs estimate that 85% of all car seats in use are improperly installed.
Major Focus: Educational campaigns, enforcement and public outreach campaigns.
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Improve Driver Decisions about Rights of Way and Turning
California's roadway users suffer from collisions resulting from poor driver decisions and data attributes improper passing, turning, lane change, right-of-way, or "other improper driving" as the primary collision factor in 23% of all fatal injury collisions from 2002 to 2004.
Major Focus: Improving driver decisions by identifying and remedying problem areas and updating educational, operational, and planning information.
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Reduce Young Driver Fatalities
Newly licensed young drivers with less than one year of driving experience have the highest crash rate of any driver group. As a result, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for young drivers.
Major Focus: Improving current educational programs, enforcement, and licensing practices.
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Improve Intersection and Interchange Safety for Roadway Users
In California, almost one in every 4 fatal crashes occurs at or near an intersection and the two most prominent crash scenarios at intersections involve left turns and vehicles that are struck from the rear.
Major Focus: Identifying where the problems are, applying safety actions, and implementing programs or engineering solutions to reduce the frequency and severity of these types of crashes.
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Make Walking and Street Crossing Safer
The rate for pedestrian fatalities is 50% higher in California than the national average. California averaged 731 fatalities per year over the last 10 years, of which half were either children or youths under the age of 20 or senior citizens age 65 or older.
Major Focus: Expanding existing programs, better identification of problem areas, and improving maintenance and planning efforts.
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Improve Safety for Older Roadway Users
Traffic collisions continue to be a major cause of serious injury to California seniors. People aged 65 and older are more likely to receive fatal injuries when compared with people from any other age group, due to their increased physical frailty.
Major Focus: Enhancing training for transportation officials, encouraging public transit as an alternative, educational campaigns, and statewide standards.
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Reduce Speeding and Aggressive Driving
Aggressive driving including speeding, following too closely, changing lanes frequently without signaling, flashing lights, and gesturing at other drivers threatens motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Because aggressive driving often reflects the attitude of a driver violating traffic laws, it can be difficult to measure precisely.
Major Focus: Defining what constitutes "aggressive driving," media campaigns, and enforcement.
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Improve Commercial Vehicle Safety
California data shows that an average of 11% of total fatalities between 2002 and 2004 resulted from collisions with trucks and buses. Data points to poor driver performance (including driver fatigue) and an inadequate level of truck awareness on the part of other roadway users as major contributing factors to commercial vehicle crashes.
Major Focus: Increasing training, educational standards, enforcement, and high crash location analysis.
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Improve Motorcycle Safety
California motorcycle rider fatalities have been on the rise since 1998, reaching 368 in 2003. Despite the fact that fewer than 3% of registered passenger vehicles nationwide are motorcycles, they account for nearly 9% of all passenger vehicle occupant fatalities.
Major Focus: Identifying high crash locations, improving driver education, media campaigns, and enhancing enforcement.
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Improve Bicycling Safety
In 2004, California bicyclist fatalities were 23% above the national rate. California's temperate climate and culture of outdoor activities are conducive to bicycling as a sports or leisure activity.
Major Focus: Developing a bicycle safety improvement program, increasing driver awareness, establishing better planning practices, and improving educational campaigns.
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Enhance Work Zone Safety
On average, 98 work zone fatalities occurred each year in California between 1995 and 2004. Highway work zones create a major safety concern for roadway users and workers alike.
Major Focus: Better training programs, enhancing standards, improving monitoring programs, better data collection, and the use of new technology.
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Improve Post Crash Survivability
No amount of prevention will completely eliminate crashes and injuries from California's roadways. As a consequence, California needs a well-prepared and highly responsive emergency medical response system.
Major Focus: Sharing databases, better communication between agencies, and promoting educational programs.
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Improve Safety Data Collection, Access, and Analysis
Good information properly used is one of the underpinnings of a sound traffic safety program. Quality data systems are vital tools that allow traffic safety professionals and others to monitor crash injuries and deaths, identify emerging problems, and evaluate safety issues.
Major Focus: Greater access to crash data and providing cross-links between different agency data systems.
For More Information
Local agencies are encouraged to review the statewide SHSP Version 2 and Implementation of the SHSP documents to identify areas of interest and potential actions relevant to their jurisdictions. These documents and more information on the implementation of the SHSP are available.
For more information, contact Jesse Bhullar, State Highway Safety Engineer in the Caltrans Division of Traffic Operations, at 916-654-5026 or by email.
Implementing SHSP's Solutions
There are many opportunities to incorporate the strategies and actions of the statewide Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) into local public works programs to improve safety on local roads.
Examples of actions that cities or counties could take include:
- Monitoring 2-and 3-lane roadways for cross-centerline collision concentrations (SHSP Action 2.4)
- Reviewing existing or potential high-crash intersections and implementing appropriate safety counter measures (SHSP Action 7.1)
- Improving pedestrian striping and including standard safety upgrades in routine maintenance and striping projects (SHSP Action 8.6)
- Establishing more bicycle corridors and creating partnerships in high-collision incident areas (SHSP section 13.1)
- Implementing a systematic approach for the review of traffic control devices in need of replacement, relocation, or upgrade (SHSP Action 5.2) to help improve driver decisions about rights-of-way and turning.
- Implementing elements of the state and federal Safe Routes to School program (SHSP Action 6.8) can contribute to reducing young driver fatalities.
- Improving left-turn options and intersections to meet the needs of older drivers (SHSP Actions 9.2) may improve safety for older roadway users.
These are just some of the strategies and actions in the statewide SHSP. The SHSP was developed around the principles of partnership and multidisciplinary collaboration. By teaming with Caltrans and other state and local safety stakeholders to implement these actions, local agencies have a real opportunity to improve safety on local roads, to reduce crashes, and to save lives.
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