Countermeasures That Work: A Highway Safety Countermeasure Guide for State Highway Safety Offices, Seventh Edition, 2013

Goodwin, Arthur H.; Kirley, Bevan; Sandt, Laura; Hall, William; Thomas, Libby; O'Brien, Natalie P.; Summerlin, Daniel · 2013 · ROSA P / United States. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

**Countermeasures That Work: A Highway Safety Countermeasure Guide for State Highway Safety Offices, Seventh Edition, 2013** is a comprehensive reference document produced by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The guide addresses the critical need for State Highway Safety Offices (SHSOs) to select effective, evidence-based strategies to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries. It focuses on behavioral countermeasures rather than engineering or vehicle-based solutions, providing a structured framework for SHSOs to identify problem areas, evaluate intervention options, and implement programs supported by federal grant funding. The document covers nine major highway safety problem areas: alcohol-impaired and drugged driving, seat belts and child restraints, aggressive driving and speeding, distracted and drowsy driving, motorcycle safety, young drivers, older drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists. For each area, the guide provides an overview of the problem’s scope and characteristics, followed by a detailed analysis of specific countermeasures. The methodology involves reviewing published research through May 2012 and updating data with NHTSA’s 2010 Traffic Safety Facts. Each countermeasure is evaluated based on four criteria: effectiveness (primarily crash reduction, but also behavioral changes), cost, frequency of use by states, and implementation time. The guide explicitly excludes countermeasures outside SHSO authority, such as roadway improvements, and those already universally implemented, such as .08 BAC laws. Key findings include the persistent prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving, which accounted for 31% of motor vehicle fatalities in 2010, despite a decline in absolute numbers since the 1980s. The guide highlights that deterrence strategies—encompassing laws, enforcement, prosecution, and offender treatment—are central to reducing impaired driving. For instance, it details the effectiveness of administrative license revocation, sobriety checkpoints, and DWI courts. In the realm of drugged driving, the guide notes a lack of robust trend data but cites roadside surveys indicating that 11.3% of nighttime drivers tested positive for illegal drugs. The seventh edition introduced new countermeasures, including alcohol vendor compliance checks, strengthened child restraint laws, cell phone enforcement, pedestrian gap acceptance training, and bicyclist passing laws. The significance of this guide lies in its role as a decision-support tool for policymakers and safety practitioners. By synthesizing complex research into accessible summaries, it enables SHSOs to prioritize interventions with the highest proven impact. The guide emphasizes that effectiveness is contingent upon vigorous implementation, extensive publicity, and adequate funding. It also directs users to complementary resources, such as NCHRP guides for cost-benefit analysis and Cochrane Reviews for systematic evidence, ensuring that state-level safety programs are grounded in scientific rigor and best practices.

Key finding

The document is a reference guide and does not present new empirical research findings or experimental results.

Methodology

review

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (41 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• driver education effectiveness
• regulatory evaluation
• dui enforcement
• seat belt use
• public messaging
• automated enforcement cameras

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation, policy recommendations
• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence