September 2019 Highway Safety Plan FY 2020 Tennessee Highway Safety Plan NATIONAL PRIORITY SAFETY PROGRAM INCENTIVE GRANTS - The State applied for the following incentive grants: S. 405(b) Occupant Protection: Yes S. 405(e) Distracted Driving: No S. 405(c) State Traffic Safety Information System Improvements: Yes S. 405(f) Motorcyclist Safety Grants: Yes S. 405(d) Impaired Driving Countermeasures: Yes S. 405(g) State Graduated Driver Licensing Incentive: No S. 405(d) Alcohol-Ignition Interlock Law: No S. 405(h) Nonmotorized Safety: No S. 405(d) 24-7 Sobriety Programs: No S. 1906 Racial Profiling Data Collection: No 1 Highway safety planning process Data Sources and Processes The Tennessee Highway Safety Office’s (THSO) strategic planning process is a precise, data- driven effort, consisting of problem identification, project selection, and program evaluation. We strive for higher standards as planners, managers, and evaluators with an emphasis on accountability as we continue to implement our strategy for allocating federal highway funds to state and local agencies. These processes are utilized to determine Tennessee’s traffic safety problems, goals, and program/project/activity emphasis. They are described below: Processes Participants Several committees and stakeholders are involved in the highway safety planning process. Tennessee receives input from its Traffic Records Coordinating Committee, its Occupant Protect Task Force, and the Impaired Driving Task Force. Members of these groups include representation from entities relevant to highway safety: the THSO, Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (TDOSHS), state and local law enforcement, and criminal justice. An example of this can be seen when looking at the composition of the Impaired Driving Task Force: 1. Tennessee Sheriff’s Association (Law Enforcement) 2. Tennessee Department of Health (Public Health) 3. Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (Treatment and Rehabilitation) 4. Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (Communications and Public Relations) 5. Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police (Law Enforcement) 6. Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (Ignition Interlock) 7. Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (Driver Licensing) 8. Tennessee Highway Safety Office (Law Enforcement) 9. District Attorneys General Conference (Prosecution) 10. Research, Planning, & Development/TITAN, Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security (Data and Traffic Records) 11. Judicial Outreach Liaison, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Adjudication) 12. Judge, Hamilton County/Chattanooga (Adjudication) 13. Metropolitan Government of Nashville Davidson County (Probation and Parole) 2 14. Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (Law Enforcement) 15. Tennessee Department of Correction (Corrections, Probation, and Parole) 16. Tennessee Highway Patrol (Law Enforcement) 17. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (Law Enforcement) 18. Administrative Office of the Courts (Courts) 19. MADD (Citizen Activists) 20. Local law enforcement Description of Highway Safety Problems The THSO and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Regional Program Manager review the data to determine the high priority areas that would be addressed with Section 402 and Section 405 funding in Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2020. For FFY 2020, the THSO informed potential grantees that identifying any data-driven highway safety problem would garner a higher priority, but the following are characterized as high- priority areas. These include a: 1. Low rate of seat belt usage; 2. Low rate of child passenger safety restraint usage; 3. High rate of crashes with alcohol as a contributing factor; 4. High rate of crashes with speeding as a contributing factor; 5. High rate of crashes involving drivers under 20 years old; 6. High rate of crashes involving the aggressive driver; and 7. High rate of crashes resulting in serious injuries or fatalities. The specific highway safety problems that subgrantees address must be data driven. They are required to identify an intervention that focuses on traffic safety problems that are statistically over represented. To assist, agencies can request comparative analyses through the Tennessee Integrated Traffic Analysis Network (TITAN) crash analysis system maintained by the TDOSHS. It is important to determine the cause of injuries or fatal crashes; therefore, subgrantees are encouraged to carefully review the crash data and examine problems within their community to unmask the root causes for over-representation in the data-defined problem area. Performance goals, both short and long term, evolve from the problem identification process. Identified emphasis areas are selected from this process and reviewed to assure they are consistent with the guidelines and emphasis areas established by NHTSA. 3 The THSO released a Grant Application Guide to assist applicants in developing a high quality application. This guide includes explanations and examples for each section and is available through the website (http://tntrafficsafety.org) and on the grants management system, TN Grants. Methods for Project Selection The FFY 2020 problem identification process began with a review of the state’s performance, utilizing 2014 to 2018 trend data. The THSO used data from the TDOSHS Planning, Research, and Development Division and subgrantees’ annual reports to give management staff an understanding of the highway safety problems within the state of Tennessee and identify productive programs and effective strategies utilized in 2018. Management staff convened to determine funding priorities, both programmatic and geographic, and developed a plan for project development for FFY 2020. Coordination with the 2014 Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) was another important consideration: Tennessee’s SHSP was developed in consultation with federal, state, local, and private sector safety stakeholders using a data-driven, multidisciplinary approach involving engineering, education, enforcement, and emergency response. Management reviewed the plan’s statewide goals, objectives, and emphasis areas. Announcements regarding the FFY 2020 Highway Safety Program were sent (mailed and emailed) to potential state and local subgrantees, including all police chiefs and sheriffs. An example is provided at the end of this section. Notification was also posted on the THSO’s website (www.TNTrafficSafety.org) and on social media sites, Facebook and Twitter. The following characteristics are considered to be important as part of the grant application process: 1. Interventions that focus on reducing injury crashes; 2. Problem-identification procedures that are data driven and that thoroughly document a local crash injury problem; 3. Data collection systems that ensure high-quality crash reporting by law enforcement (e.g. accuracy and completeness of forms, supervisory oversight, training, etc.); 4. Plans to link crash data to medical information concerning such variables as severity of injury, cost of treatment, degree of incapacitation, etc.; 5. Documentation of the rationale that the intervention selected has a reasonable probability of being effective; 6. An adequate intervention design that will provide meaningful outcome data on the degree of success in reducing injury crashes. The applicant must describe how the program’s effectiveness will be measured and the comparison data against which the program’s outcome will be evaluated; 7. Where local conditions permit, initiatives to coordinate crash-injury reduction efforts with other injury-reduction activities within the community, by participating in 4 cooperative efforts with other professionals and citizens (e.g., educational, civic, judicial, business, medical, etc.) involved in creating a safe community. Potential subgrantees were informed that a full grant proposal for FFY 2020 funding had to be submitted detailing the following: 1. the process for focusing on traffic safety problems that were data driven; 2. the logic behind their proposed intervention strategies; 3. the allowance for valid outcome measures in their project design; and 4. the proposed budget. The deadline for highway safety grant applications for FFY 2020 funding was March 31, 2019. A total of 400 applications (246 programmatic and 154 High Visibility Enforcement) were submitted to the THSO. After grant applications are received, each application is reviewed in detail to determine if it meets the THSO’s goals, objectives, and project design requirements and is given a score. Based upon this analysis, the THSO management team discuss the application scores and other considerations (current or past grant performance; likelihood of project to significantly reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities; multi-jurisdictional nature of the project) to reach a general consensus on the grant applications. Funding is also a data-driven process through the use of a ranking and allocation tool that ensures counties (enforcement agencies) are funded on a comparable basis, considering the extent of weighted fatal, injury and property damage only (PDO) crashes, alcohol-related crashes, 15-24 aged driver crashes, 65+ aged crashes, speeding crashes, motorcycle crashes, population, and vehicle miles of travel (VMT) in each county. Comparable basis refers to normalizing the county numbers relative to that of the county with the highest value. Recommendations for funding are then made to the commissioner of the TDOSHS, who