Winter 2009, Vol. 12 No. 1

Performance Measures for State Traffic Record Systems in Development

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with the cooperation of GHSA, is developing performance measures for state traffic record systems. Each of the six core data systems- crash, vehicle, driver, roadway, enforcement-adjudication, and injury-will have at least one performance measure defined for each of six performance criteria- timeliness, accuracy, completeness, uniformity-consistency, integration, and accessibility.

The performance measures will be developed through a consensus process by a panel of experts from across the nation. Panel members have hands-on experience in data collection, data file management, and data use for each of the six core state data systems.

In February, the panel will meet to develop draft performance measures. In late Spring, a white paper will be issued summarizing the preliminary recommendations and requesting public comment on the draft measures. The draft measures also will be discussed at the July 2009 Traffic Records Forum and the 2009 GHSA Annual Meeting. The expert panel will meet again in October 2009 to review all comments and produce the final list of performance measure recommendations.

States currently are required to establish and demonstrate progress using measures of traffic record performance in order to receive Sec. 408 Traffic Safety Information System Improvement Grants. All states have adopted some performance measures for this purpose, but the measures currently used vary enormously across the states. This project will produce a minimum set of measures that all states can use. Each state can then establish its own goals using these measures.

This project is a successor to the recently-developed measures for federal and state traffic safety performance. The report documenting those measures, Traffic Safety Performance Measures for States and Federal Agencies (DOT HS 811 025, August 2008), is available online.

The project is being conducted by the Preusser Research Group, Inc., in cooperation with GHSA. For more information, contact Jim Hedlund, the project director, at jhedlund@sprynet.com.