Strategies for Safer Highways and Avoidance of Auto Collisio

All across the United States, particularly populated state and counties, roadside crashes are frequent incidences. The yearly toll is quite staggering. In an approximation of statistics regarding yearly crashes, about 15,000 individuals are killed, and an additional 1,000,000 are injured. Meanwhile, the society is burdened down with the expenses of every crash that occurs, amounting to $150 billion, every year.

Most of the auto accidents happen for a number of reasons:

- driver error / carelessness
- medical emergency
- vehicle defects / malfunctions
- roadway deficiency
- weather conditions

Many accidents are often the result of a combination of these factors.

Through the years, many organizations in the country have made conscious efforts dedicated to finding solutions for these accident causes. They have also maintained steady programs that are geared towards improving safety along every roadway.

The organizations that led in these efforts are:

- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
- American Association of State Highway and Transportation (AASHTO)
- Federal Highway Administrations (FHWA)
- Transportation Research Board
- Roadway Safety Foundation
- Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)

However, despite dedicated efforts shed by these organizations, the accidents in highways and roadsides continue to become considerable and maintain its status as a recurrent problem in the county.

Sometimes the improvements made for highway safety face varying conditions and then paves the way for new risks and dangers in the roads for motorists and drivers.

Lately, the top safety organizations concentrated on highway accidents preventions and security has merged their efforts to address the ongoing difficulties created by accidents in the roadsides. They developed a plan to strategically deal with the dangers and risks recurrent in the nation's highways.

The agencies worked together and attempted to establish a comprehensive roadway safety solution based on their shared visions of highly secure roadways. Their specific objective is to promote an organized highway system wherein "drivers rarely leave the road; but when they do, the vehicle and the roadside work together to protect vehicle occupants and pedestrians from serious harm".

Some particular goals that support this purpose are added to the goals being maintained by current roadway safety approaches, which are:

1. Keeping vehicles on the roadways

2. Removing, seeking remedies and/or shielding vehicles that leave the roadway from existing roadside hazards

3. Minimizing injuries to the vehicles' passengers that crash into the roadside hazards

To achieve the vision mentioned, the improved plan identified five missions, which will focus on various successive efforts that would necessitate the safety improvement in the country's roadsides.

"The five missions are:
Mission 1 - Increase the awareness of roadside safety and support for it
Mission 2 - Build and maintain information resources and analysis procedures to support continued improvement of roadside safety
Mission 3 - Keep vehicles from leaving the roadway
Mission 4 - Keep vehicles from overturning or striking objects on the roadside when they do leave the roadway
Mission 5 - Minimize injuries and fatalities when overturns occur or objects are stuck in the roadside. "

The entire plan can be read and studied from http://gulliver.trb.org/publications/nchrp/nchrp_w33.pdf
Further, the organizations that participated in realizing these visions are pooling funds to maximize the usefulness of their plans. It is being hoped that as the mission of these organizations continue, the American society in the present and future will benefit much by experiencing a sense of security and safety in the highways, becoming witness to decreasing crashes and auto accidents along with the deaths and injuries that come along with it.