On behalf of the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), Sain Associates recently completed the update to the Tennessee Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). The SHSP is a five-year document required by the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) through the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), which is the primary federal funding source for transportation safety projects. The SHSP is a statewide effort to reduce fatalities and serious injuries that must follow the FHWA’s guidelines and checklist. The program takes a data-driven approach and involves multidisciplinary safety partners. The SHSP identifies safety trends in fatal and serious injury crashes, determines strategic statewide countermeasures, and develops a progress tracking framework to evaluate effectiveness using performance measures.
Did you know?
Tennessee was the first state to develop and submit a SHSP in 2004. Back then, it was only one page. This year’s updated document is now 81 pages, and the five-year update requirement started in 2014.
A steering committee of various agencies and safety partners was involved in updating the 2025-2029 Tennessee SHSP with TDOT and FHWA taking the lead. The SHSP evaluated the past performance of the last plan and established a new goal for the next five years. The goal of the SHSP is to reduce fatalities and serious injuries below the historic trend by taking a proactive approach toward zero deaths.
Emphasis on Safety
The updated SHSP includes the Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) Safety Assessment as an appendix. The VRU Safety Assessment is a new requirement that will be included in the SHSP moving forward. The assessment is an initiative to understand the rising number of VRU crashes, which includes bicyclists, pedestrians, and those who need mobility aids. The Safety Assessment identifies high-risk areas, infrastructure deficiencies, and existing programs impacting VRUs.
The updated SHSP also incorporates the Safe System Approach which promotes a culture of safety with the expectation that all users of the roadway system, regardless of mode, will be protected and that responsibility is shared among those who plan, build, maintain, and use the transportation system.
The SHSP is divided into six emphasis areas based on the contributing crash factors. Each emphasis area has strategies and action items to reduce those crashes. For example, work zone crashes fall under the Operational Improvements emphasis area. One action item that will impact work zone crashes is an effort to explore various Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) strategies to make travel through and around work zones and congested areas safer and more efficient.
With the completion of the update, a press release was published, the report was shared with various agencies, and the report was posted on the TDOT website. The SHSP stakeholders will attend quarterly meetings to share and track action item performance. The first quarterly meeting for the updated plan was held on February 4, 2025.