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Synthesis of Studies That Relate Amount of Enforcement to Magnitude of Safety Outcomes [Traffic Tech]
In the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act, Congress directed NHTSA to establish the National Cooperative Research and Evaluation Program (NCREP) to conduct research and evaluations of State highway safety countermeasures. Under a subsequent reauthorization, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, program activities have continued. This program is administered by NHTSA and managed jointly by NHTSA and the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). Each year, the States (through GHSA) identify potential highway safety research or evaluation topics they believe are important for informing State policy, planning, and programmatic activities. This project addressed one of the selected topics.
While there has been a large amount of published research showing that enforcement reduces unsafe driving behavior and crashes, there has been little research on the relationship between the intensity or amount of enforcement and the magnitude of observed safety impacts. This study investigates the research question: What is the impact of various amounts of enforcement activity on safety outcomes? In other words, how much change in prohibited driving behaviors could one expect in a particular jurisdiction by increasing the amount of enforcement activity by a specific amount? The answer can assist highway safety professionals in making decisions about how to best invest limited resources.
Read the full study here.