Utah: Highway Safety Improvement Program 2021 Annual Report
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Summary
This document is the 2021 Annual Report for the Utah Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), submitted by the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) to the Federal Highway Administration. The report addresses the state’s efforts to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on public roads, responding to a period of increased traffic fatalities from 2013 to 2016 and a subsequent rise in severe crashes in 2020 due to pandemic-related trends. The primary motivation is to align infrastructure improvements with the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) and the "Zero Fatalities" goal, prioritizing projects with the highest potential to mitigate severe crashes. UDOT employs a dual methodology for project identification: crash analysis for specific hot spots and systemic modeling for network-wide improvements. The state utilizes data-driven tools, including the Highway Safety Manual (HSM), the usRAP safety model, and Bayesian crash predictive models developed in partnership with Brigham Young University. In 2019, UDOT modified its funding allocation strategy, shifting from a formulaic distribution based on regional crash counts to a competitive selection process prioritized by benefit-cost ratios. This change aims to fund the most effective safety projects regardless of geographic location. The program covers both state-maintained and local roads, though comprehensive data for local roads remains limited. Non-infrastructure efforts, such as education and enforcement, are funded separately with state funds due to federal restrictions under the FAST Act. During fiscal year 2021, UDOT programmed approximately $35.2 million in HSIP and related funds, obligating $27.1 million (76.9%). Of the HSIP funds, 42% addressed systemic improvements, including median barriers, rumble strips, and intersection upgrades. Specific projects included cable median barriers on Interstate 80 and 15, intersection geometry improvements, and variable speed limit systems. The report notes that 33% of programmed funds were allocated to non-infrastructure projects, such as data analysis and safety modeling. Challenges to full fund obligation included delays in project advertisement due to rising construction costs and project cancellations, which UDOT mitigates through over-programming strategies. Safety performance data indicates that while fatalities decreased from 2017 to 2019, they rose to 276 in 2020, mirroring national trends. Serious injuries peaked in 2015, declined through 2019, and increased to 1,544 in 2020. The fatality rate per hundred million vehicle miles traveled (HMVMT) was 0.914 in 2020, up from 0.753 in 2019. The report concludes that the shift toward benefit-cost prioritization and the integration of real-time data into the SHSP will support the resumption of downward trends in severe crashes as traffic patterns normalize. UDOT continues to emphasize roadway departure, intersection safety, and distracted driving as key focus areas for infrastructure investment.
Key finding
The report serves as an administrative and performance overview of Utah's HSIP, documenting a strategic shift to competitive, benefit-cost-based project selection and reporting a rise in fatal and serious injury crashes in 2020 following previous downward trends.
Methodology
dataset
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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- Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation
- Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes
- Methodological Resource: dataset resource