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The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context
While road safety in the United States (U.S.) has been continually improving since the 1970's, there are indications that these improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Strategic Highway Safety Plans (SHSPs) are prepared by States to guide road safety management, however ass...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6779262/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31589622 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223646 |
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author | Hughes, Brett P. Falkmer, Torbjorn Anund, Anna Black, Melissa H. |
author_facet | Hughes, Brett P. Falkmer, Torbjorn Anund, Anna Black, Melissa H. |
author_sort | Hughes, Brett P. |
collection | PubMed |
description | While road safety in the United States (U.S.) has been continually improving since the 1970's, there are indications that these improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Strategic Highway Safety Plans (SHSPs) are prepared by States to guide road safety management, however assessing the appropriateness of these plans remains a significant challenge, especially for the future in which they are to be applied. This study developed a new methodology to assess SHSPs from the perspectives of comprehensive system-based safety management and relevant future issues that can be applied before SHSPs are implemented, thereby avoiding long periods after implementation before assessing the appropriateness of the plans. A rating scale was developed and applied to assess 48 U.S. SHSPs against two key criteria: 1. a comprehensive framework for road safety, and 2. the anticipated changing, difficult and unpredictable nature of future transport and its context. The analysis concluded that current SHSPs have good national oversight with several strengths but were weak in some areas of content and did not address future challenges. Improvements are suggested to strengthen the plans’ thoroughness by being consistent with systems theory and practice, as well as ways that these SHSPs can be more resilient to future circumstances. Implementing the recommendations in this paper provides the opportunity to adopt a system-based safety management practice that has been successful in other hazardous industries. Doing so is expected to most efficiently and effectively continue the recent improvements to road safety, which is likely to be increasingly difficult otherwise. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6779262 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67792622019-10-19 The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context Hughes, Brett P. Falkmer, Torbjorn Anund, Anna Black, Melissa H. PLoS One Research Article While road safety in the United States (U.S.) has been continually improving since the 1970's, there are indications that these improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Strategic Highway Safety Plans (SHSPs) are prepared by States to guide road safety management, however assessing the appropriateness of these plans remains a significant challenge, especially for the future in which they are to be applied. This study developed a new methodology to assess SHSPs from the perspectives of comprehensive system-based safety management and relevant future issues that can be applied before SHSPs are implemented, thereby avoiding long periods after implementation before assessing the appropriateness of the plans. A rating scale was developed and applied to assess 48 U.S. SHSPs against two key criteria: 1. a comprehensive framework for road safety, and 2. the anticipated changing, difficult and unpredictable nature of future transport and its context. The analysis concluded that current SHSPs have good national oversight with several strengths but were weak in some areas of content and did not address future challenges. Improvements are suggested to strengthen the plans’ thoroughness by being consistent with systems theory and practice, as well as ways that these SHSPs can be more resilient to future circumstances. Implementing the recommendations in this paper provides the opportunity to adopt a system-based safety management practice that has been successful in other hazardous industries. Doing so is expected to most efficiently and effectively continue the recent improvements to road safety, which is likely to be increasingly difficult otherwise. Public Library of Science 2019-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6779262/ /pubmed/31589622 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223646 Text en © 2019 Hughes et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Hughes, Brett P. Falkmer, Torbjorn Anund, Anna Black, Melissa H. The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context |
title | The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context |
title_full | The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context |
title_fullStr | The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context |
title_full_unstemmed | The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context |
title_short | The relevance of U.S. Strategic Highway Safety Plans in a future context |
title_sort | relevance of u.s. strategic highway safety plans in a future context |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6779262/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31589622 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223646 |
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