Alternative Strategies for Safety Improvement Investments

This digest presents the results of a study to review the two methods currently being used by states to allocate safety resources. The terminology commonly used to describe these methods is “black spot” analysis and “systematic” method. A survey of practice was distributed to all 50 states and follow-up case studies were conducted in four of the responding states—Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and North Carolina. The states that participated in this project indicated that the characteristics associated with their severe crashes have caused their programs to be more focused on rural areas, to include more projects that involve the proactive deployment of low-cost strategies widely across their systems, and to provide an increased level of engagement with local highway agencies