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SECTION I
Summary
Introduction
One of the hallmarks of the AASHTO Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) is to approach
safety problems in a comprehensive manner. The range of strategies available in the guides
covers various aspects of the road user, the highway, the vehicle, the environment, and the
management system. The guides strongly encourage the user to develop a program to tackle
a particular emphasis area from each of these perspectives in a coordinated manner. To
facilitate this, the electronic form of the material uses hypertext linkages to enable seamless
integration of various approaches to a given problem. As more guides are developed for
other emphasis areas, the extent and usefulness of this form of implementation will become
even more apparent.
The goal is to move away from independent activities of engineers, law enforcement, educators,
judges, and other highway-safety specialists. The implementation process outlined in the
guides promotes the formation of working groups and alliances that represent all of the
elements of the safety system. In so doing, they can draw upon their combined expertise to
reach the bottom-line goal of targeted reduction of crashes and fatalities associated with a
particular emphasis area.
The six major areas of the AASHTO SHSP (Drivers, Vehicles, Special Users, Highways,
Emergency Medical Services, and Management) are subdivided into 22 goals, or key
emphasis areas, that impact highway safety. Though reduction of speeding-related fatalities
is not specifically included in the list of SHSP emphasis areas, speeding is a contributing
factor in many fatal crashes. Therefore this guide, which addresses speeding, complements
the other guides in this series. Strategies discussed are applicable to high- and/or low-speed
roadways and include education, enforcement, and engineering approaches to reducing
speeding-related fatalities.
Speeding is among the most significant contributing factors to fatal collisions. Excessive
speeds reduce a driver's ability to react and maneuver and require greater stopping
distances. The severity of collisions, particularly those involving pedestrians, bicyclists, and
motorcyclists, increases dramatically with the speed of collision. Speeding-related crashes
are an issue that can be deterred with increased efforts in education, engineering, and
enforcement. Currently there are many different efforts in the nation and around the world
in practice to reduce these types of collisions.
Throughout this guide, problems and strategies associated with "low-speed" and "high-
speed" roads are presented. AASHTO considers (AASHTO Policy on Geometric Design of
Highways and Streets, 5th Edition) the upper limit for low-speed design (i.e., design speed) is
45 mph, and the lower limit for high-speed design is 50 mph.
Many of the strategies involve speed limits and advisory speeds (setting, posting,
enforcing, etc.). As it is common practice for posted speed limits to be some nominal
value less than the design speed (often 5 mph), this guide presents information on high-
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