United States Department of Transportation
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Abstract:A significant safety issue in the United States is the substantial number of vehicle related crashes. The number of fatal
crashes in the southeastern portion of the U.S. (States of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) is disproportionately higher than those for the entire country. In general, the
eight states collectively report approximately 26-percent of the total annual number of fatal automobile-related crashes in
the U.S. On average, the southeastern states experience an additional 30 fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled than
the U.S. average. The Federal Highway Administration and the eight southeastern states initiated a joint research effort
for the region to study this observed over-representation of fatal crashes.
Findings of the study suggest that improved features such as widening shoulders, enhancing delineation, and protecting
the clear zone would substantially reduce these fatal crashes. Some of the researchers recommended that additional
procedures and policies may be an appropriate countermeasure for wide-scale improvements. Countermeasures (physical
as well as political) were explicitly recommended to address two-lane rural roads, safety restraint use and fixed-object
crashes.
A supplemental finding was the presence of extensive pavement edge drop-offs for fatal crash sites in at least two of
the participating states. As this observation occurred as a result of field inspection and was not initially identified as a
target problem, it was not studied in great detail for this research effort but merits special comment since it is potentially a
significant finding of the study.
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