Safer Roads Through Better Design: IHSDM Web Pages Offer Glimpse of 21st Century Safety Software - Brief Article

Public Roads, Jan, 2000 by Catherine Denk

Newly launched Web pages for the Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) offer a comprehensive view of "new millennium" software that should ultimately ensure better designed and safer roads.

The IHSDM Web pages can be accessed by visiting FHWA's Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center home page at http://www.tfhrc.gov and clicking on "Safety" then "Interactive Highway Safety Design Model."

Targeted specifically to roadway planners and designers, as well as to others in the transportation engineering community, the IHSDM Web site provides visitors with a complete description of IHSDM as developing safety software that will provide never-before-available and easy-to-access data to facilitate evaluation of the safety implications of design alternatives. IHSDM software will be applicable throughout the planning, design, and review phases of highway construction and reconstruction projects.

The IHSDM Web site features pages dedicated to each of the seven IHSDM modules: crash prediction, design consistency, driver/vehicle performance, intersection diagnostic review, policy review, roadside safety, and traffic analysis.

Other IHSDM Web features include a page on the Geometric Design Laboratory, which provides technical support to FHWA's Office of Safety Research and Development at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, Va.

Visitors to the IHSDM Web site can order an IHSDM "Preview" CD-ROM online or can link to a timetable showing the current estimated public release dates of the various IHSDM modules.

The Web site's complete library offers links to IHSDM related research, and an IHSDM "mailbox" allows Web site visitors to e-mail FHWA staff with comments and inquiries.

In line with FHWA's goal of reducing highway injuries and fatalities by 20 percent over the next 10 years, IHSDM software has the potential to make significant contributions to saving lives and many dollars in unnecessary road reconstruction as highway designers will be offered the opportunity to provide the American public with the safest roadways in U.S. history.

The new IHSDM Web pages provide access to essential information for roadway planners and designers, DOT officials, and others interested in this safety software of the near future.

Catherine Denk of A/E Group Inc. is a communications assistant for FHWA's Geometric Design Laboratory in the Office of Safety Research and Development.