Tennessee (Statewide)
CLIENT: TDOT
Every year in Tennessee, thousands of lives are forever changed by traffic crashes. Some result in tragic fatalities, others in serious injuries that impact families, communities, and livelihoods. The Tennessee Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) for 2025–2029 is the state’s response to this ongoing challenge. It serves as a comprehensive, statewide roadmap for reducing serious injuries and saving lives on all public roads. Sain Associates was honored to be involved in the development of this important safety blueprint in partnership with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT).
What makes this project worthy of special recognition is its people-first approach and forward-thinking strategy. The SHSP update goes beyond just analyzing crash data. The update uses that data to tell stories, prioritize communities in need, and create real-world solutions. Over the course of the project, Sain coordinated with more than 50 stakeholders, from surveys and in-person workshops to regular Core Team planning sessions. These conversations helped shape targeted actions in key safety areas like distracted driving, pedestrian safety, rural road departures, impaired driving, and traffic system improvements.
A major innovation in this plan is its adoption of the Safe System Approach (SSA), a new to the US safety philosophy that assumes people will make mistakes but insists that no one should lose their life because of it. This idea shifts responsibility from just the driver to everyone who designs, maintains, and uses the road system. Sain Associates helped Tennessee become a leader in this shift by incorporating new planning tools, transportation user-based analysis, and performance tracking into every stage of the project.
The complexity of the SHSP also cannot be understated. It required aligning technical data, evolving federal regulations, and diverse local needs into one cohesive, actionable plan. Sain met this challenge with a combination of data science, stakeholder empathy, and detailed engineering knowledge. The result is a plan that is not only compliant and well-organized, but also meaningful and implementable.
In short, the SHSP 2025–2029 update is more than a document — it’s a commitment to saving lives, a model of inclusive and proactive engineering, and a shining example of how collaboration and innovation can build safer roads for everyone. Sain Associates is proud to have helped Tennessee take this critical step toward a safer future.
In 2025, Sain received an ACEC Tennessee Excellence in Engineering Award for our work on the SHSP.