How Are Emphasis Areas in North American Strategic Highway ay Safety Plans Selected?

摘要

An important potential benefit of a jurisdiction developing an upper-level traffic safety policystatement, such as a strategic highway safety plan (SHSP) or a traffic safety action plan, is thecreation of a manageable number of focus areas, known as emphasis areas. The responsibleagencies in the jurisdiction can then direct their finite resources in a systematic and strategic waythat is designed to maximize the effort to reduce the number and severity of roadway collisions.This study reviewed the SHSPs of 53 jurisdictions in North America, and conducted descriptivedata analyses to clarify the selection process of jurisdiction-specific emphasis areas. We foundthat the current process relies heavily on high-level collision data analysis and communicationamongst the SHSP stakeholders, but may not be the most effective way of selecting the emphasisareas. This study then formulated a formal collision diagnosis tool (the beta-binomial test) toclarify and illuminate the selection of jurisdiction-specific emphasis areas. We developednumerical examples to demonstrate how engineers can apply the proposed diagnosis test toimprove the selection and prioritization of individual jurisdictions’ emphasis areas.