West Virginia: Highway Safety Improvement Program 2021 Annual Report
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Summary
This document serves as the 2021 Annual Report for West Virginia’s Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), detailing the state’s efforts to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on public roads in compliance with federal requirements. The program is coordinated by the West Virginia Department of Transportation’s Traffic Engineering Division and is guided by the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). The current SHSP focuses on five emphasis areas: Road Departure, Alcohol and Drug Impaired Driving, Occupant Protection, Speeding and Aggressive Driving, and Improving Highway Safety Data. Road departure crashes are identified as the primary cause of death and serious injury, driving the majority of infrastructure improvements. The HSIP methodology relies on a data-driven process to identify and prioritize projects. Project selection utilizes crash frequency and rate data, exposure metrics, and functional classification, with local roads included in the ranking process alongside state-owned routes. Projects are prioritized primarily by benefit-to-cost ratios and available funding through a competitive application process. In fiscal year 2021, approximately $27.5 million was apportioned for HSIP, with $35.19 million programmed and $28.72 million obligated. Forty-eight percent of funds addressed systemic improvements, such as high-friction surface treatments, cable median barriers, and rumble strips. The state also utilized the Highway Safety Manual to evaluate potential countermeasures and allocated $135,000 for non-infrastructure projects, specifically data analysis for county routes. Safety performance data from 2012 to 2020 indicates a significant long-term decline in traffic fatalities and serious injuries. Fatalities dropped from 339 in 2012 to 267 in 2020, while serious injuries decreased from 1,871 to 805 over the same period. The fatality rate per hundred million vehicle miles traveled (HMVMT) fell from 1.799 in 2012 to 1.668 in 2020. The report notes that these reductions occurred across all road classifications. However, the state faced impediments to full fund obligation and network screening due to data quality issues within the OASIS system, which initially allowed mapping for only 60% of statewide crashes. To address this, the department acquired an external system scheduled for full operation in 2022. The significance of the report lies in its documentation of West Virginia’s systematic approach to highway safety, demonstrating measurable progress toward federal safety targets. By focusing heavily on road departure countermeasures and integrating local roads into the safety planning process, the state has achieved a 25% decline in fatalities since the adoption of its first SHSP in 2007. The report highlights the importance of accurate crash data for effective network screening and outlines ongoing efforts to improve data infrastructure and expand systemic safety treatments across the state’s highway network.
Key finding
West Virginia experienced a 25% decline in fatalities across all road classifications over the 14 years following the adoption of its first Strategic Highway Safety Plan, with the 2021 HSIP report highlighting continued infrastructure-focused efforts to reduce road departure crashes.
Methodology
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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 |
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| 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