Developing Strategic Highway Safety Plans

Developing Strategic Highway Safety Plans

Establish a statewide direction

A Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) is a statewide, data-driven, multidisciplinary plan for reducing fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads. It connects engineering, behavioral, enforcement, emergency-response, and other safety activities around shared priorities. A state DOT does not own every road or deliver every intervention, so the plan needs partners able to act across jurisdictions and professions.

The SHSP differs from a project list and from the State Highway Safety Plan used for NHTSA-administered behavioral programs. The SHSP provides strategic direction for those programs and for state, local, and Tribal transportation planning. A useful plan makes that connection explicit: a roadway-departure emphasis might inform HSIP investments, driver programs, emergency access improvements, and local maintenance priorities without turning all those activities into one funding program.

Current 23 CFR 924.9 requires an SHSP update no later than five years after the previous approved version. The state DOT develops it in consultation with safety stakeholders; the Governor or a responsible state agency official delegated by the Governor approves it. The FHWA Division Administrator approves the update process. These are distinct responsibilities, rather than a claim that FHWA writes or directly approves every local project.

Define the problem using multiple sources

Analyze fatal and serious-injury trends, crash types, users, contributing circumstances, roadway characteristics, and geographic patterns. Include locally owned and Tribal roads as relevant within the statewide public-road scope, rather than limiting the analysis to the state highway network. Use crash, roadway, traffic, driver, vehicle, enforcement, and injury-surveillance information where appropriate and available.

A high count identifies burden; a rate relates outcomes to exposure; a model can help estimate expected risk. Each informs a different part of the problem. For example, a low-volume rural network can have scattered severe roadway-departure events that do not form a dense hot spot. Systemic risk features may justify action even when individual segments have no recent recorded fatality. Pedestrian activity and access needs can similarly reveal priorities overlooked by vehicle-only exposure measures.

Document data limitations. Missing local roadway inventories or inconsistent injury coding should lead to a data-improvement action, not silent exclusion of affected communities. Community and responder observations can identify issues for investigation, while quantitative evidence helps establish magnitude and track change. Neither a stakeholder anecdote nor a large dataset automatically settles the appropriate treatment.

Select emphasis areas and measurable goals

Emphasis areas organize important problems, such as intersections, roadway departure, pedestrians, impairment, or occupant protection. Select them from evidence and stakeholder judgment. They may overlap: an impaired-driver fatality can also be a roadway-departure crash. Do not add overlapping emphasis-area totals and describe the sum as a unique statewide fatality count.

Set an overarching safety vision and practical interim objectives. An eventual goal of eliminating fatal and serious injuries expresses direction; intermediate targets and milestones allow management decisions. Define the measure, baseline period, target date, and responsibility. “Improve safety” is too vague to evaluate. “Reduce severe pedestrian injuries while implementing priority crossing and speed-management actions” can be developed into specific outcome and delivery measures.

Coordinate SHSP goals with federal performance targets and related program plans, but distinguish them. A five-year strategic plan update is not the same process as setting annual PM1 safety targets. Targets should reflect ambition, evidence, and the interventions that can actually be delivered. A target alone is not an implementation strategy.

Convert priorities into coordinated actions

For each emphasis area, identify strategies that address mechanisms, not just the symptom of a high count. Specify actions, responsible leads, partners, timelines, resources, performance measures, and evaluation arrangements. A rural-departure strategy might combine risk-based rumble-strip deployment, roadside improvements, impaired-driving interventions, and better emergency location information. Each action needs an accountable owner.

Avoid treating a mnemonic such as the “Es” as a mandated organizational chart. It can remind teams to include disciplines, but the plan should use the roles and authority needed for the problem. Public health can support injury analysis; law enforcement can contribute behavioral and operational evidence; local agencies can deliver maintenance treatments; emergency services can explain survivability barriers.

The FHWA SHSP guidance explains stakeholder consultation and strategic connections. Engage leaders early enough to secure commitments rather than presenting them with a completed plan and an assumed obligation to fund it. Identify which actions require new policy, interagency agreements, or additional data before they can proceed.

Turn an emphasis area into action

• Define the need and a measurable objective.
• Select strategies linked to the diagnosed mechanisms.
• Assign leads, partners, resources, and schedules.
• Review delivery and outcomes between formal updates.

Maintain an active implementation cycle

Use implementation teams and periodic reviews to monitor milestones, funding, delivery barriers, and safety outcomes. A dashboard can show that a project is delayed even before enough injury data exist to evaluate its effect. Investigate whether delays arise from design capacity, procurement, coordination, maintenance concerns, or community disagreement; assign a corrective action.

Update implementation priorities as evidence changes without assuming every operational adjustment requires rewriting the entire strategic plan. Formal updates should revisit data, priorities, strategies, consultation, and approvals, rather than merely changing the cover date. If an emphasis area improves, examine whether the improvement reflects sustained intervention, exposure changes, or statistical fluctuation before removing it.

The central skill is connecting a statewide safety diagnosis with coordinated actions on roads of all ownership types. A well-developed SHSP provides a shared direction and a basis for learning, while the local-plan lesson explains how communities translate that direction into their own practical programs.