Plans & Programs
Vision Zero Focus
The CHSP identifies factors related to fatalities and serious injuries across all roadways and travel modes, provides strategic direction for state, local, and tribal transportation plans, and establishes a collaborative framework for eliminating fatalities and serious injuries through the 5 Es of transportation safety.
- Engineering Montana's roadways to ensure best practices are implemented and maintained with safety as the priority.
- Education through training programs and activities, public information, and traffic safety outreach campaigns.
- Emergency medical response supports the essential role of emergency medical and response services in reducing severity of injury outcomes and to ensure technologies and systems are adequately funded and equipped to respond to crashes.
- Enforcement of Montana's traffic laws and deterrence includes changing driver's understanding of law enforcement, prosecution, adjudication penalties, and the impact on victims and survivors’ families and friends.
- Evaluation ensures strategies, actions, and resources are effectively meeting objectives through established evaluation metrices for future refinement of safety strategies.
Safety Partners
Safety Partners collaborate to reach Vision Zero
MDT and safety partners work together to reach Vision Zero by analyzing crash data and focusing on crash factors where there is the greatest opportunity to save lives in Montana.
The four emphasis areas identified through the CHSP data driven process with consideration of the Safe System Approach are:
- Safe Roads considers the FHWA’s Proven Safety Countermeasures and encompasses the key focus area relative to the built environment to reduce roadway departures, intersections, and vulnerable road user infrastructure.
- Emergency Response-Post Crash Care focuses on the period immediately following a crash and the response and transportation to a medical facility. The key focus areas include data coordination and training and equipment.
- Safe Speeds/Safe Vehicles addresses vehicles and speed-related factors and speed management strategies that may impact crash severity and frequency on Montana’s roadways. The emphasis area includes the key focus areas of speed-related, aggressive and erratic driving, large vehicle involved, and emerging technologies.
- Safe Road Users focuses on human behavior factors that contribute to fatalities and serious injuries concentrating on driver and occupant actions that may be a contributing factor or impact the severity outcomes of a motor vehicle crash. Key focus areas are unrestrained vehicle occupants, careless/inattentive/distracted drivers, and impaired driving.
The Big Picture
Click for a larger view.MDT is working together with many agencies and partners to improve safety in Montana. Each has missions and plans that guide their individual programs. The Montana Comprehensive Highway Safety Plan (CHSP) aligns these programs with a common vision and goal to allow for better collaboration and coordination.
A Closer Look
The CHSP is comprehensive in the sense that it encompasses the programs of multiple agencies and jurisdictions throughout the state. Each entity has a role in the development of the plan but retains authority over the elements for the plan that are within their jurisdiction. Participating agencies form a collaborative partnership in reducing highway crashes, injuries and deaths.
Montana has integrated two key elements in all safety emphasis areas:
- Promote the Vision Zero goal through collaboration and communication with all stakeholders to normalize a safe traffic culture to include driver behavior and safe roads.
- To collaborate across agencies, organizations, and the public to improve traffic safety culture, driver behavior, and promote the accuracy, completeness, integration, timeliness, uniformity, collection, and accessibility of data used in traffic safety analysis.
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