BACKGROUND
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines High Visibility Enforcement (HVE) as a universal traffic safety approach designed to create deterrence and change unlawful traffic behaviors. HVE combines highly visible and proactive law enforcement targeting a specific traffic safety issue. Law enforcement efforts are combined with visibility elements and a publicity strategy to educate the public and promote voluntary compliance with the law. NHTSA has funded several evaluations of combined enforcement programs with mixed results.
The State Highway Safety Offices (SHSOs), in conjunction with their state highway patrols and local law enforcement agencies, conduct multiple HVE campaigns throughout the year as countermeasures to road user crashes caused by impaired driving, lack of seat belt use, distracted driving, and speeding. These annual multiple campaigns are labor intensive for law enforcement agencies, and there are concerns about their effectiveness.
If research could demonstrate through evidence-based data that combined enforcement efforts are indeed effective, this would have positive resource impacts on SHSOs and their law enforcement partners.
OBJECTIVE
The goal of this research was to develop a scalable evaluation framework and methodologies to determine the effectiveness of High Visibility Enforcement (HVE) campaigns to reduce crash frequency and severity involving road user behaviors such as impaired driving, lack of seat belt use, distracted driving, and speeding.
Status: Completed. The final report is available here:
https://doi.org/10.17226/27751
