Safety Data: Costs, Quality and Strategies for Improvement- Executive Summary

FHWA-RD-96-027The objectives of this project were to examine the costs and quality of safety data and to identify improvement strategies. The project's scope was narrowed to three key sources: the crash report, roadway inventories, and medical records. The primary focus was on crash reporting. Within the medical source, the focus was upon data regarding driver condition prior to crash, and injury severity, since these are of high interest to the highway community. Since the same piece of data will have a different quality for different users and uses, it was necessary to identify the variety of users and uses of highway safety data. This executive summary presents an overview of the research results. The complete results are available in the research report (FHWA-RD-96-191) and the final report (FHWA-RD-96-192)