Committee on Safety
AASHTO Liaison
Kelly Hardy, Senior Engineering Program Manager for Safety
khardy@aashto.org
SCOHTS Strategic Plan (adopted June 2011):
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standing Committee on Highway Traffic Safety (SCOHTS) Strategic Plan establishes the vision and mission of the Committee and is based on the AASHTO Strategic Plan. The six goals are focused on supporting the AASHTO vision of being a catalyst for organizational and technical excellence in the realm of highway safety.
The Highway Safety Manual is available
What is the Highway Safety Manual?
The Highway Safety Manual (HSM) introduces a science-based technical approach that takes the guesswork out of safety analysis. The HSM provides tools to conduct quantitative safety analyses, allowing for safety to be quantitatively evaluated alongside other transportation performance measures such as traffic operations, environmental impacts, and construction costs.
Visit http://www.highwaysafetymanual.org for more information.
AASHTO Reauthorization Policy Theme 1: Promote Safety
“The Highway Safety Improvement Program’s pre-FAST Act flexibility is returned for public awareness, traffic safety enforcement, emergency services, and safety research for experimental efforts for up to 25 percent of total HSIP funding.”
Committee on Safety General Purpose Statement
The Committee on Safety shall focus on the advancement of multidisciplinary approaches to eliminating crashes, particularly those resulting in traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads in the United States and in locations where roads interact with other modes. The committee shall serve as the technical and policy resource on transportation systems safety for AASHTO, and in this role will coordinate with other Association committees and support Member Departments’ safety performance initiatives. The AASHTO Strategic Highway Safety Plan shall guide the activities of the Committee on Safety. Members should come from both policy and technical levels within the Member Departments, and will represent the multidisciplinary approach to safety performance, including experience in engineering, enforcement, education, emergency medical service or incident response, and the use of data-driven safety evaluation, analysis and diagnosis to identify and address the need to reduce crashes. Primary focus areas of the Committee shall be strategic safety planning, programs and policies, road and facility users, effective countermeasures, safety performance and data analysis and evaluation, workforce development, research, and local road safety. The Committee will coordinate with other AASHTO committees and external organizations on issues of joint interest, such as workforce development, data, and operations. The main functions of the committee will include research exchange of information on current practices, and implementation of new strategies and practices, and research results. Key themes of committee discussions and initiatives will include innovation and technology, performance measures, safety culture and multidisciplinary partnerships that accelerate progress toward goals. The Committee intends to address safety issues on non-highway modes as needed, and may establish subcommittees to focus on these modes.
Committee on Safety Leadership
Chair: Mike Tooley, Montana DOT
Vice Chair: Vacant
Secretary: Beth Alicandri, FHWA
AASHTO Staff Liaison: Kelly Hardy
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