Executive Summary

Note: The following document is an example Roadway Departure (RD) Safety Implementation Plan for a fictional State with fictional characteristics (e.g., number and types of RD crashes, implementation costs, and benefits). The purpose of this document is to give readers a general idea of the structure and content of the RD Safety Implementation Plans. It should not be used for State-specific data analysis, countermeasure selection or other decision-making safety management processes.

The State Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) has a safety goal of reducing the number of annual roadway fatalities within the State to no more than XXX by the end of XXXX.

Roadway departure fatalities account for approximately XX percent of all fatalities in STATE. A data analysis package along with a set of roadway departure countermeasures was merged to identify a set of cost effective countermeasures, deployment levels, and funds needed to achieve a XX percent roadway departure fatality reduction goal.

The data analysis indicates that the roadway departure goal can be achieved with the following enhancements to the safety program:

• The traditional approach of relying primarily on pursuing major improvements at high-crash roadway departure locations must be complemented with a) a systematic approach that involves deploying large numbers of relatively low-cost, cost-effective countermeasures at many targeted high-crash roadway departures and b) a comprehensive approach that coordinates an engineering, education, and enforcement (3E) initiative on corridors and in urban areas with large numbers of severe roadway departure crashes.
• The systematic improvement categories to be deployed include the following: sign and marking enhancements on curves with crash histories, centerline rumble strips on rural two-lane highways, edge line rumble stripes and shoulder rumble strips, installation of micro-texture or similar high skid surfaces, and selective rural tree removal program.
• The systematic and comprehensive approaches will generate a much larger number of roadway departure improvements statewide, and District personnel will have to be trained and take a more active role in identifying the appropriateness of systematic improvements within their Districts.
• The safety program needs to be expanded to incorporate low-cost, cost-effective countermeasures on other types of projects, such as resurfacing and surface transportation projects, when a crash history exists within the area of the work and the countermeasures can reduce future crash potential.
  • Use of the Safety Edge
• The safety program must encompass cost-effective treatments on local roads since a sizeable portion of the statewide roadway departure crash problem occurs on local roads.
• Additional countermeasures rarely or never used in this state need to be carefully and judiciously deployed on highway sections that have specific crash problems that these countermeasures can address. The countermeasure should be evaluated to determine if more widespread use is appropriate.
• To achieve the roadway departure safety goal, it will take an investment of approximately $XX million over the 5-year period or X million per year. In addition, X million annually will be needed for education and enforcement initiatives on corridors and cities.

This plan provides specific information on how these additions to the current safety program can be effectively implemented.

The bottom line for a successful plan implementation is that, once fully implemented over a 10-year period, approximately XX, XXX roadway departure crashes and almost XXXX disabling injury crashes will be prevented, and more than XXX lives will be saved.