A Motor Vehicle Safety Planning Support System: The Houston Experience

Abstract

Planning Support Systems (PSS) have long been used for motor vehicle safety in order to improve roadways or implement programs for drivers. Usually called crash information systems, traffic safety specialists have long assumed that improvements come about through timely information on motor vehicle crashes and analysis of that information. Frequently referred to as a ‘data driven’ methodology, the analysis of motor vehicle crashes is the basis upon which many, if not most, improvements to the traffic system have come about in the USA, Europe and elsewhere. In the last decade, the use of geographic information systems (GIS) has brought a much needed spatial dimension to crash analysis and widened the analytical and policy tools available for safety planners and traffic engineers.