Technologies for Improving Safety Data

This synthesis will be of interest to state transportation agency personnel, as well as to others who work with them in the area of safety. It provides information for state departments of transportation (DOTs) on new technologies for the acquisition, processing, and overall management of crash, roadway inventory, and traffic operations data. The objective was to summarize the current state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art use of technologies for efficient and effective collection and maintenance of data for highway safety analysis. Information is presented about the U.S. DOT developing new safety and analysis tools to help state DOTs identify safety problems and countermeasures to increase highway safety. States are limited in their abilities to make informed decisions about the allocation of scarce safety resources because many states lack the database elements and linkages between databases to compile the data sets required by the new safety analysis tools. This synthesis effort contains information received from three individual surveys, developed to gather state-level information about the core safety data areas--crash, traffic operations, and roadway inventory. These surveys yielded approximately 60 returns from 34 different state DOTs and, along with a literature review, Internet search, and follow-up telephone contacts and interviews, generated the information used in this synthesis.