Highway Safety Improvement Program

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Highway Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>23 CFR Part 924</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FHWA-2023-0045]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2125-AG07</RIN> <SUBJECT>Highway Safety Improvement Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The purpose of this notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) is to update the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) regulations to address provisions in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (also known as the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law” (BIL)) and reflect current priorities and state-of-practice. Specifically, FHWA proposes to amend the regulatory language to incorporate the Safe System Approach, clarify the scope of the HSIP to focus on the safety of all road users on the entire public road network, improve evaluation practices, streamline reporting efforts, and ensure States are collecting Model Inventory of Roadway Elements (MIRE) fundamental data elements. The proposed changes would clarify provisions regarding the planning, implementation, evaluation, and reporting of HSIPs that are administered in each State. These changes would further strengthen and advance the safety and equity priorities of the DOT National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS) and assist States with making safety gains designed to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on the Nation's roads. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before April 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Mail or hand deliver comments to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Dockets Management Facility, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590, or submit electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> All comments should include the docket number that appears in the heading of this document. All comments received will be available for examination and copying at the above address from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., E.T., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. Those desiring notification of receipt of comments must include a self-addressed, stamped postcard or may print the acknowledgment page that appears after submitting comments electronically. Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all comments received into any of our dockets by the name of the individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> published on April 11, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 70, Pages 19477-78) or you may visit <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ms. Karen Scurry, Office of Safety, (202) 897-7168, <E T="03">karen.scurry@dot.gov;</E> or Mr. David Serody, Office of the Chief Counsel, (202) 366-4241, <E T="03">david.serody@dot.gov,</E> Federal Highway Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. Office hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., E.T., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access and Filing</HD> You may submit or access all comments received by the DOT online through: <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Electronic submission and retrieval help and guidelines are available on the website. It is available 24 hours each day, 365 days each year. Please follow the instructions. An electronic copy of this document may also be downloaded from the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> 's home page at: <E T="03">www.federalregister.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">I. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</HD> The FHWA proposes to update the HSIP regulations to reflect the changes to HSIP made in BIL (Pub. L. 117-58), further strengthen and advance the Department's safety and equity priorities consistent with the NRSS, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and assist States with making safety gains designed to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on the Nation's roads. The Department recognizes that the current status of traffic fatalities in the United States is unacceptable  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> and has adopted the Safe System Approach as the guiding paradigm to address roadway safety and achieve the goal of zero roadway fatalities and serious injuries in the NRSS. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  National Roadway Safety Strategy | U.S. Department of Transportation <E T="03"> https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">USDOT Releases New Data Showing That Road Fatalities Spiked in First Half of 2021 | NHTSA.</E> </FTNT> The Safe System Approach is a worldwide movement that has been in place for more than 30 years. The Safe System Approach requires a paradigm shift in how road safety is addressed for all users. Whereas traditional road safety strives to modify human behavior and prevent all crashes, the Safe System Approach refocuses transportation system design and operation on anticipating human mistakes and lessening impact forces on the human body to reduce crash severity and save lives. It is based on a shared responsibility and emphasizes that all stakeholders have a role to play in ensuring that crashes do not lead to fatal or serious injuries. The HSIP is a key place to integrate the Safe System Approach as it sets the funding and policy tone for national roadway safety implementation efforts. Therefore, FHWA proposes updates to the HSIP regulation to include regulatory language to incorporate the Safe System Approach. The proposed changes are based on the opportunities identified in the NRSS and informational report on Integrating the Safe System Approach with the HSIP. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Integrating The Safe System Approach With The Highway Safety Improvement Program: An Informational Report (dot.gov)</E> FHWA-SA-20-018. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">II. Summary of the Major Provisions of the Regulatory Action in Question</HD> The purpose of this NPRM is to update the HSIP regulations to incorporate the Safe System Approach, clarify the scope of the HSIP to focus on the safety of all road users on the entire public road network, improve evaluation practices, streamline reporting efforts, and ensure States are collecting MIRE fundamental data elements. Specifically, this rulemaking proposes to amend FHWA's regulations to incorporate the Safe System Approach by revising the policy of the HSIP regulation to focus on advancing a Safe System Approach in support of the long-term goal to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries, emphasize how a State's Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) can support a Safe System Approach, clarify that a State's SHSP must include a vulnerable road user safety assessment in accordance with 23 U.S.C. 148(l), and require each State to conduct a systemwide safety risk assessment as part of its HSIP data analysis process. This rulemaking also proposes to clarify throughout the regulation that the HSIP applies to all public roads and for all road users and ensure a State's HSIP process meet legislative requirements, including those added by BIL. The FHWA also proposes to improve HSIP evaluation practices by requiring each State to establish a process to evaluate the effectiveness of data improvement activities for MIRE fundamental data elements and clarifying that HSIP evaluation shall include individual project evaluations, countermeasure evaluations, and program evaluations. To streamline HSIP reporting efforts, FHWA proposes to update the required content of the annual HSIP report to minimize duplication and focus on progress implementing highway safety improvement projects and the effectiveness of those projects. Finally, to ensure States are collecting the required MIRE fundamental data elements, FHWA proposes to require each State to submit MIRE fundamental data elements as part of their regular Highway Performance Monitoring System submittal beginning in 2026. <HD SOURCE="HD2">III. Costs and Benefits</HD> In accordance with Executive Order (E.O.) 12866, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance, and DOT guidance, FHWA evaluated this proposed rule for quantifiable costs, cost savings, and benefits. The FHWA anticipates increased data collection and reporting requirements will impose additional burden on State departments of transportation (States) as well as additional review burden by FHWA. The FHWA anticipates that cost savings to FHWA and States will result from changing the focus of the HSIP report. In accordance with OMB guidance, FHWA estimated the costs and cost savings over a 10-year analysis period using both a 7 percent and a 3 percent discount rate. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> For the 10-year period from 2024 through 2033, FHWA estimated the costs of the proposed rule at $64.9 million, or $9.2 million on an annual basis, measured in 2022 dollars and using a 7 percent discount rate. If a 3 percent discount rate is used these costs are estimated at $70.3 million for the same 10-year period, or $8.2 million on an annual basis, measured in 2022 dollars. The FHWA also expects the proposed rule to have some cost savings. For the 10-year period from 2024 through 2033, FHWA estimated the cost savings of the proposed rule at $227,442, or $32,383 on an annual basis using a 7 percent discount rate. If a 3 percent discount rate is used, these cost savings are estimated at $276,230 for the same 10-year period, or $32,383 on an annual basis. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Office of Management and Budget. <E T="03">Circular A-4, Regulatory Analysis.</E> 68 FR 58366, October 9, 2003. </FTNT> Changes ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 89k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━