Iowa comprehensive highway safety plan

In Iowa, hundreds of people die and thousands more are injured on our public roadways each year despite decades of efforts to end this suffering. Past safety efforts have resulted in Iowans benefiting from one of the best state roadway systems in the nation. Due to multi-agency efforts, Iowa has achieved 90 percent compliance with the state's mandatory front seat belt use law, earned the nation's second-lowest percent of alcohol involvement in fatal crashes and made safety gains in system-wide roadway design and operational improvemens. Despite these ongoing efforts, the state's annual average of 445 deaths and thousands of life-changing injuries is a tragic toll and an unacceptable public health epidemic in our state. To save more lives on our roadways, Iowans must be challenged to think differently about life-saving measures addressing young drivers, safety belts, and motorcycle helmets use and accept innovative designs such as roundabouts. Iowa must apply evidence-based strategies and create a safety culture that motivates all citizens to travel more responsibly. They must demand a lower level of tolerance for Iowa's roadway deaths and injuries. The Iowa Comprehensive Highway Safety Plan (CHSP) engages diverse safety stakeholders and charts the course for this state, bringing to bear sound science and the power of shared community values to change the culture and achieve a standard of safer travel for our citizens. How many roadway deaths and injuries are too many? Iowa's highway safety stakeholder's believe that, "One death is one too many" and effective culture-changing policy and program strategies must be implemented to help reduce this death toll from an annual average of 445 to 400 by the year 2015.