Papers due: May 1, 2025, 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. See the Submission section for details and a link to the Submission website.

Award Details

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is pleased to announce the Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award, part of the Highway Data Analysis Excellence Awards Program. The award is designed to encourage university students to use Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) data to investigate a topic that advances highway safety and to develop a paper to document their original research.

The Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award encourages university and community college students, as potential future highway safety professionals, to use HSIS data. The contest goals are to introduce students to using high-quality safety data, researching methods to derive recommendations, and making decisions using high-quality data.

Eligibility and Guidelines

The following requirements must be met by all applicants and submissions for the 2025 Award.

Eligibility

The Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award research paper competition is open to 2024–2025 undergraduate and graduate students, including those enrolled in community colleges, who are enrolled in United States-based degree-granting programs that support highway safety. These programs may include, but are not limited to, engineering, planning, statistics, psychology, and economics. Individuals who have graduated from a program within the six months prior to the submission date or have graduated in the Spring, Summer, or Fall semester of 2024 are also eligible, if the paper is based on work conducted as part of their academic program.

The contest will consider submissions by individual students or groups of students. Teams, however, must define one lead student and contributing students for the project (prizes reflect this requirement). Faculty can participate in an advisory role but cannot be coauthors on the paper.

Topic

Applicants must use HSIS data in their submitted papers, which include data from California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Washington, and the city of Charlotte, NC, to investigate a topic that advances highway safety. The author’s analysis must be conducted on data requested and acquired* from HSIS. https://highways.dot.gov/research/safety/hsis/data

While not mandatory, applicants are encouraged to use data from other sources in support of the primary analysis using HSIS data, such as data from the following sources:

• Other States or localities;
• Long-Term Pavement Performance program;
• Motorcycle Crash Causation Study database;
• Roadway Lighting Database;
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
• Second Strategic Highway Research Program, such as Naturalistic Driving Study or Roadway Information Database; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; and/or
• U.S. Census Bureau.

For more information, please contact Carol Tan, Safety Data and Analysis Team Leader at carol.tan@dot.gov.

Word Count

The length of each paper must be 2,500–5,000 words, including the abstract, text, references, and tables. Each table counts as 250 words. If a paper has 4 tables, the abstract, text, and references may be no more than 4,000 words. Papers not meeting this requirement may be rejected without review.

Original Research

For authors who have submitted papers to and received awards for previous competitions, HSIS expects that 2025 papers contain new, original material. All 2025 papers should contain at least 50 percent new, original content, and the remaining 50 percent should not be verbatim copies of previously published work or a manuscript previously submitted to the HSIS paper competition.

Evaluation Criteria

Papers submitted to the 2025 competition will be evaluated on the following criteria and assigned point values.

Objective of the Paper and Emphasis on Safety (10 points)

Is the objective of the paper clearly stated and relevant to the safety community? For example, using the HSIS data to model the impacts of signal spacing on capacity does not have an emphasis on safety. However, using HSIS data to model the impact of signal spacing on crashes is a more appropriate topic.

Importance of HSIS Data to Paper Topic (20 points)

Was the use of HSIS data critical to achieving the objective of the paper? The paper should focus on the use HSIS data and how critical it is in completing the objective of the study. HSIS can be used in conjunction with other data sources linked together.

Soundness of Methodology (20 points)

Is the approach appropriate for the data? The paper should describe and use appropriate data analysis techniques that suit the objective.

Analysis of HSIS Data (40 points)

Was the analysis of the HSIS data specifically, correctly, and clearly conducted? The paper should analyze HSIS data using the proposed statistical analysis techniques.

Discussion of Results (10 points)

Were the results discussed appropriately? The specific findings of the analysis are not part of the evaluation criteria; instead, this evaluation focuses on the discussion of results. For example, if a study on traffic signal spacing found no effect on crashes, this will not affect the evaluation of the paper. The student should discuss the implication of the results, including a critical review of methodology and potential for future research.

Submission Details and Deadline

The 2025 online submission process will be coming soon, via the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Awards website and process.

• Step 1: Develop and write paper per above requirements and guidelines.
• Step 2: Download the 2025 Submission Cover Sheet. 
• Step 3: Submit PDF (of all materials) via instructions/process outlined on the ITE website. Note: Make sure to “Login with ITE” before submitting a paper.

The turnaround time for requested HSIS data is normally less than 2 weeks; however, time needed to conduct analysis of these data varies per project. Please be sure to plan accordingly and in advance of the paper submission deadline.

The HSIS Research Paper Competition is jointly administered by FHWA and the Institute of Transportation Engineers.