Guidelines for Developing a High-Visibility Enforcement Campaign to Reduce Unsafe Driving Behaviors among Drivers of Passenger and Commercial Motor Vehicles: A Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) Based on the Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) Pilot Project

NHTSA · 2007 · ROSA P / United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Motor Carrier 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

This document provides guidelines for developing Selective Traffic Enforcement Programs (STEPs), also known as high-visibility enforcement campaigns, aimed at reducing unsafe driving behaviors among drivers of both passenger and commercial motor vehicles. The guide is motivated by a 2004 Congressional directive requiring the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to educate passenger vehicle drivers on sharing the road safely with commercial vehicles. It draws primarily on lessons learned from the Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) pilot project conducted in Washington State, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the STEP model in improving safety. The STEP model operates on the deterrence premise that the fear of being stopped outweighs the desire to violate traffic laws. The guide outlines a comprehensive framework for planning and implementing these campaigns, emphasizing strong partnerships between traffic safety and law enforcement professionals. Key components include establishing a steering committee with diverse stakeholders, defining problem identification and goals based on crash data, and designing integrated enforcement and communication programs. The document details specific operational considerations, such as selecting target violations (e.g., cutting off trucks, tailgating), choosing enforcement sites based on crash history and roadway characteristics, and coordinating enforcement waves with public awareness campaigns. It also addresses logistical issues like officer training, media strategy, message testing, and evaluation design to measure changes in public awareness and violation rates. The TACT project, which serves as the primary case study, utilized a pre-post research design comparing intervention corridors with control corridors. The campaign targeted specific unsafe behaviors, particularly "cutting off" large trucks, through intensive enforcement and extensive media outreach. The evaluation of the TACT project demonstrated success across multiple metrics: messages were received and understood by the public, knowledge shifted in the intended direction, self-reported behavior improved, and observed behavior confirmed these self-reports. Consequently, the pilot project achieved its goals of increasing public awareness, increasing citations for unsafe driving, and reducing observed unsafe behaviors, thereby improving safety in the intervention corridors. The significance of this guide lies in its provision of a replicable model for states and communities to implement effective traffic safety campaigns. By synthesizing the operational decisions and lessons learned from the TACT project, the document offers practical advice on staffing, budgeting, agency selection, and program evaluation. It underscores the necessity of continuous data collection and evaluation to enhance program effectiveness. The guide serves as a resource for highway safety and law enforcement professionals, providing structured questions and best practices to ensure that high-visibility enforcement campaigns are strategically designed, properly executed, and rigorously evaluated to reduce crashes involving commercial and passenger vehicles.

Key finding

The TACT high-visibility enforcement campaign successfully reduced unsafe driving behaviors and increased public awareness in intervention corridors compared to control corridors.

Methodology

field_study

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 (45 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.

• public messaging
• traffic safety culture
• seat belt use
• 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