• January 11th, 2011

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), responding to a request by the Law Enforcement and Traffic Safety Division (the “highway safety office” or HSO) of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA), assembled a team to conduct a traffic records assessment. Concurrently the HSO carried out the necessary logistical and administrative steps in preparation for the onsite assessment. A team of professionals with backgrounds and expertise in the several component areas of traffic records data systems (crash, driver, vehicle, roadway, citation and adjudication, and injury surveillance) conducted the assessment January 30 to February 4, 2011.

The scope of this assessment covered all of the components of a traffic records system. The purpose was to determine whether Alabama’s traffic records system is capable of supporting management’s needs to identify the State’s safety problems, to manage the countermeasures applied to reduce or eliminate those problems, and to evaluate those programs for their effectiveness. The following discusses some of the key findings regarding the ability of the present traffic records system to support management of the State’s highway safety programs.