The FHWA Office of Safety delivers safety data and analysis technical assistance through its Roadway Safety Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Program. The program's online application gives applicants the ability to ask for general assistance or for assistance related to specific FHWA safety data programs, initiatives, or common safety data topics.

Programs

Highway Safety Manual

The Highway Safety Manual (HSM) provides transportation professionals with knowledge, techniques, and methodologies to quantify the safety-related effects of transportation decisions. The HSM facilitates integrating quantitative safety performance measures into roadway planning, design, operations, and maintenance decisions.

If you are using the HSM now, or are considering using it, technical assistance can help you:

• Identify sites with the most potential for crash reduction.
• Identify factors contributing to crashes and associated potential countermeasures to address these issues.
• Evaluate the crash reduction benefits of implemented treatments.
• Conduct economic appraisals of improvements to prioritize projects.
• Calculate the effect of various design alternatives on crash frequency and severity.
• Estimate potential crash frequency and severity on highway networks, and the potential effects of transportation decisions on crashes.

Roadway Data Improvement Program

The Roadway Data Improvement Program (RDIP) helps transportation agencies improve the quality of their roadway data to better support safety and other improvement initiatives. The RDIP focuses on the content, process, and practices used by the agency for collecting, managing, and utilizing their roadway data.

Technical assistance can help your agency improve data collection across these key areas:
1. Roadway Data Collection and Technical Standards
2. Data Analysis Tools and Uses
3. Data Management and Governance
4. Data Sharing and Integration

A technical assistance team reviews and assesses a state’s roadway data system for the content of the data collected, ability to use, manage and share the data and to offer recommendations for improving the roadway data. The RDIP also examines the State’s ability to coordinate and exchange roadway data with local agencies such as, cities, counties and MPOs. The RDIP is ultimately intended to help states improve the roadway data the State uses to develop their Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP), which supports the State’s Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP).

Roadway Data Extraction Technical Assistance Program (Spring 2014)

The Roadway Data Extraction Technical Assistance Program (RDETAP) is in development. It is intended to assist states to identify and extract Model Inventory of Roadway Elements (MIRE) from commonly available existing sources of data, such as State video logs, Google Earth and Bing street view maps. The RDETAP will build upon a technique of data extraction that was pilot tested with the New Hampshire DOT as part of the MIRE Management Information System project in 2012-2013.

The RDETAP will include a RDETAP Guide to provide instruction on how to extract roadway data and translate it into a state’s roadway inventory system. It will also provide direct technical assistance to state DOTs and local agencies (e.g., cities, counties, MPOs, LTAPs etc.) that need more "hands-on" instruction in how to use the data extraction techniques, with the intent that a cadre of individuals within that state are trained in how to identify and extract the data elements intended for collection. The technical assistance portion of the RDETAP is expected to be ready in the Spring of 2014.

Topics

Data Collection

Focuses on roadway inventory data and its integration with crash and traffic volume data to enable use of state-of-the-practice safety analysis methods.

Data Analysis

Focuses on applications of state-of-the-practice safety analysis tools in safety management, planning, and project development processes.

Data Management

Focuses on policies, procedures, and personnel exist for the effective management of roadway safety data.

Data Interoperability

Focuses on how roadway safety data relates to other data. Additionally, it considers whether existing data can be expanded as new technologies and tools are developed in the future, or as needs change.

Tools/Software

A virtual or onsite demonstration of software attributes, default value and result interpretation. This is a demonstration of software applicability and uses not an application to specific condition or circumstance.

Local Data Systems/Issues

Technical assistance for local agencies, municipalities, counties, and MPOs that may have less robust safety data systems.