Public Awareness Survey Recommendations of the NHTSA-GHSA Working Group

Hedlund, J.; Cassanove, T.; Chaudhary, N. · 2011 · ROSA P / United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This report outlines recommendations from the NHTSA-GHSA Working Group for a standardized set of survey questions to track driver attitudes, awareness of safety enforcement, and self-reported driving behaviors. The primary motivation was to establish a core set of questions that states and federal agencies could use in regular telephone or Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) surveys to monitor the effectiveness of highway safety campaigns regarding seat belt use, impaired driving, and speeding. The authors, from the Preusser Research Group, reviewed existing surveys conducted by 38 states and national organizations since 2004 to identify best practices and common metrics. The methodology involved analyzing survey characteristics, question types, and time periods used in prior state and national surveys. The working group proposed a "Survey Question Matrix" organizing questions by subject (alcohol, seat belts, speeding) and topic (behavior, media awareness, enforcement awareness). They recommended using a consistent 30-day recall period for all questions to balance exposure to campaigns with accurate respondent memory. The report advises against including detailed questions on specific media messages or changes over time in the core set, as these vary by state and year; instead, it suggests states add such questions locally. The recommendations prioritize questions that quantify behavior or measure the perception of enforcement intensity, which is critical for evaluating high-visibility enforcement campaigns. The findings present specific recommended questions for each matrix cell. For impaired driving, the report recommends asking how many times respondents drove within two hours of drinking in the past 30 days, supplemented by data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. For seat belts, it recommends asking how often respondents use seat belts, noting that observation surveys already provide usage rates, so self-reporting helps identify non-user characteristics. For speeding, due to the complexity of the behavior, it recommends quantifying frequency of driving significantly over the limit on specific road types (e.g., 35 mph on a 30 mph road). For all three subjects, the report recommends including questions on awareness of enforcement media and the perceived chance of being stopped or ticketed, as these metrics directly reflect the deterrent effect of enforcement campaigns. The significance of this work lies in providing a standardized framework for traffic safety evaluation. By adopting a core set of questions, states can generate comparable annual data on driver behavior and enforcement perception, facilitating better assessment of safety programs. The report concludes by discussing survey design, scheduling, and costs, noting that while many states conduct ad-hoc surveys, few conduct annual telephone surveys, implying that implementing this core set would represent a new operational activity for most states. The recommendations aim to streamline data collection while ensuring the metrics are robust enough to inform policy and campaign adjustments.

Key finding

The report recommends a core set of eight survey questions, including specific items for impaired driving behavior, seat belt use frequency, speeding frequency on local and highway roads, and awareness of enforcement for each category.

Methodology

review

Provenance

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

Topics

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

• seat belt use
• incidence prevalence
• public messaging

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