Strategic Highway Safety Plan

What is the Strategic Highway Safety Plan?

Every state in the nation is required to develop a Strategic Highway Safety Plan, which uses crash data to identify the leading causes of serious injuries and deaths on public roads. The plan is developed by local, state and federal safety organizations who agree to dedicate their resources toward the plan's strategies and goals.

Ohio has identified five Emphasis Areas for improving safety:

  • Improving the quality, accuracy, timeliness and availability of crash data
  • Reducing the occurrence and severity of run-off-road, intersection and head-on collisions
  • Addressing high-risk drivers between the ages of 15 and 24, and high-risk behaviors such as impaired driving, low seatbelt use and excessive speed
  • Targeting motorcycle and bicycle riders, pedestrians and commercial vehicles, which are more likely to be involved in serious crashes
  • Reducing the high number of rear-end collisions caused by congestion

Ohio has developed a variety of strategies to reduce these crash types that involve different disciplines, including engineering, education, enforcement and emergency response.

Strategic Highway Safety Plan

SHSP Matrix

 

The chart illustrates the overlapping causes of crashes and the need for a multi-discipline approach that involves engineering, education, enforcement and emergency response. 

The chart plots all the Emphasis Areas in the Strategic Highway Safety Plan. Areas of yellow, orange and red show a stronger relationship between the crash types. 

Example:  In the top, left-hand corner, you will see that between 2004 and 2008, Ohio had more than 2,300 fixed-object fatalities where a driver left the road and hit an object, such as a tree or utility pole. As you move across the top row to the right, you will conclude that many of the fatalities also involved excessive speed, alcohol and unbelted drivers and passengers.  This information demonstrates the need to pool our resources across safety disciplines and agencies to address the problem.

 2004-2008 SHSP Matrix 

   

SHSP Emphasis Area Trackers

Each quarter, a committee of local, state and federal safety agencies meets to review crash trends in each Emphasis Area and discuss implementation of key strategies that will reduce serious crashes across Ohio.

The following links show crash data for each Emphasis Area and compare the data over time. This gives the committee information it can use to determine which Emphasis Areas are experiencing a reduction in fatalities and serious injuries and which Emphasis Areas need greater attention.

 

 

  
ODOT Zephyr The Ohio Department of Transportation
1980 West Broad Street, Columbus Ohio, 43223
Ted Strickland, Governor | Jolene M. Molitoris, ODOT Director
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