Congress established the second strategic highway research program (SHRP 2) in 2006 to investigate the underlying causes of highway crashes and congestion in a short-term program of focused research. To carry out that investigation, SHRP 2 targets goals in four interrelated focus areas:

Safety: Significantly improve highway safety by understanding driving behavior in a study of unprecedented scale

Renewal: Develop design and construction methods that cause minimal disruption and produce long-lived facilities to renew the aging highway infrastructure

Reliability: Reduce congestion and improve travel time reliability through incident management, response, and mitigation

Capacity: Integrate mobility, economic, environmental, and community needs into the planning and design of new transportation capacity