Risk Management for Transportation Programs Employing Written Guidelines as Design and Performance Standards

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Legal Research Digest 38: Risk Management for Transportation Programs Employing Written Guidelines as Design and Performance Standards examines the common practice for public road agencies, federal, state, and local, to formulate written policies, guidelines or standards, and manuals seeking to encourage compliance with accepted professional wisdom and design techniques, and the yeard sticks these standards may establish by which their conduct will be measured in tort litigation. In setting out these

This research should be helpful to policy officials, design engineers, risk managers, safety officials, and attorneys responsible for torts and administrative rulemaking. The contents are organized in three sections.
Section I, Introduction, covers (A) Statement of the Problem and (B) Background on Highway Agency Tort Liability.
Section II, Survey Results--Programs Employing Written Guidelines as Design and Performance Standards, is presented under the following headings: (A) Legal Review of Design and Performance Standard Guidelines; (B) Examples of Liability/Nonliability from Guidelines; (C) Justification of Design Exceptions; and (D) The Precedential Value of United States v. Gaubert.
Section III, Conclusion, contains concluding remarks.
There are 3 appendices: (A) Questionnaire; (B) Disclaimer Language; and (C) Design Exceptions Criteria.