NCHRP Report 501 provides a detailed outline of an integrated safety management system required to effectively develop and implement a strategic highway safety program. It provides detailed descriptions of several methodologies, including:

• Methodologies for identifying crash concerns and developing combinations of strategies for supporting jurisdictional goals.
• Methodologies for estimating the effectiveness of promising or innovative strategies that have insufficient information.
• Methodologies for evaluating performance measures to determine the level of implementation and success in meeting of the goals of an SHSP.

The integrated safety management process consists of the following steps:
1. Review highway safety information.
a. Apply crash problem identification techniques.
b. Establish an overall highway safety goal/vision.
2. Establish emphasis area goals.
a. The Critical Analysis Reporting Environment (CARE) is used to perform a subset comparative analysis of crash data.
b. The task team leaders inform team members of emphasis areas and the desired level of input.
c. Potential team members include:
i. Federal, state, and local transportation officials.
ii. State and local highway patrol or police.
iii. Emergency medical services.
iv. Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.
v. Driver license agency.
vi. Human factor professionals from a university or consulting firm.
3. Develop objectives, strategies, and preliminary action plans to address the emphasis areas.
a. The task team may utilize the emphasis area NCHRP 500 series guide.
b. Agencies may contribute to non-engineering solutions.
c. The countermeasures are evaluated for:
i. Target group or population.
ii. Expected effectiveness.
iii. Keys to success.
iv. Potential difficulties.
v. Appropriate measures and data.
vi. Associated needs.
vii. Organizational, institutional, and policy issues.
viii. Issues affecting implementation time.
ix. Costs.
x. Training and other personnel needs.
xi. Legislative Needs.
d. In addition to the NCHRP 500 series, the appendices of the report provide scientifically-based methods to assist with countermeasure evaluation, countermeasure selection, and action plan development.
4. Determine appropriate combination of strategies for identified emphasis areas.
5. Develop detailed action plan.
6. Implement plan and evaluate performance.