To address the challenges of moving people and goods efficiently and safely on the nation's highways, Congress has created the second Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP2). SHRP2 is a targeted, short-term research program carried out through competitively awarded contracts to qualified researchers in the academic, private, and public sectors. SHRP2 addresses four strategic focus areas: the role of human behavior in highway safety (safety); rapid highway renewal (renewal); improved travel time reliability through congestion reduction (reliability); and transportation planning that better integrates community, economic, and environmental considerations into new highway capacity (capacity).

Under current legislative provisions, SHRP 2 will receive approximately $218 million with total program duration of seven years. Additional information about SHRP2 can be found on the program's website at www.trb.org/SHRP2. The objective of the safety focus area is to mitigate traffic injuries and fatalities by preventing or reducing the severity of collisions. Every 1 percent reduction will prevent 430 deaths and $2.3 billion annually in medical expenses and other losses from these collisions. Moreover, collisions are a leading cause of nonrecurring congestion. Collision prevention has added benefits in terms of reduced delay, fuel consumption, and emissions. The SHRP2 safety research plan includes two tracks: a large field study of driving behavior and performance using a comprehensive, state-of-the-art instrumentation package installed in the vehicles of volunteer participants; and a video system to record the movements of all vehicles at specific road sites such as an intersection.

The SHRP2 field studies are intended to support a comprehensive safety assessment of how driver behavior and performance interact with roadway, environmental, and vehicular factors and the influence of these factors and their interactions on collision risk, especially the risk of lane departure and intersection collisions. The accompanying chart lays out the main projects anticipated. The chart provides a general idea of the flow of work. The exact number, content, and timing of contracts are subject to change. Project S04 relates to the large field study of driver behavior and will provide and manage road information to be used in safety analysis.

The in-vehicle driving behavior and crash risk study is shown across the top of the chart, beginning with a study design (S05) that leads to project S07 to recruit volunteer drivers, install the instrumentation, and collect data in multiple sites starting in 2010. Project S05, the study design, includes the development of a complete data collection system, a field trial of the system, and the management plan for the full in-vehicle study. The study design is supported by project S01 to identify analytic methods to address the research questions and project S03 to evaluate mobile measurement systems collecting detailed and accurate roadway information in the study areas. Project S02 will integrate the findings of the S01 projects to produce an analysis plan for the full in-vehicle driver study. Roadway data will be collected in the study areas under project S04B. Project S04A will acquire existing roadway data, provide technical coordination for collection of roadway data under project S04B, and produce the SHRP 2 roadway information database. The S07 site data collection projects will be managed by an overall quality assurance and technical coordination contractor (Project S06). Multiple analysis projects (S08) are planned to address a wide range of research questions using the data collected.

• DTHF61-06-H-01009

• Safety

• FY 2002-2022 / Safety / Safety Data and Analysis

Driving behaviors will be correlated with particular highway design features, providing foundational information that highway and traffic engineers can use to design safer roads. The roadway information database also provides a model for developing linked datasets for asset management purposes. [Source: http://www.trb.org/StrategicHighwayResearchProgram2SHRP2/PublicationsSHRP2.aspx]