Core Competencies for Highway Safety

July 25, 2005

Dear Colleagues:

The TRB subcommittee on Safety Workforce Development invites your comments on a set of Core Competencies for Highway Safety. As many of you have observed, there are few, if any, comprehensive, multidisciplinary educational opportunities available in highway safety. A widespread scan of university curricula conducted by the subcommittee proved the observation to be true.

The subcommittee has defined Core Competencies as the minimum set of skills, knowledge, and qualifications that defines the core of what we know about safety management. The Core Competencies are broad-based and meant to reflect the elements of a sufficient set of highway safety education fundamentals necessary to perform as a highway safety professional, regardless of academic discipline or organization. Perhaps most importantly, we need to make sure we are training the next generation of transportation researchers in the most advanced theory and methods. The idea is to “raise the bar” in highway safety education and training to produce a next generation of highway safety professionals who understand and apply scientific principles not only in research but also in the workplace.

The subcommittee included members from professional member organizations with a highway safety focus, academe, the federal government modes, the private sector, TRB, and others. We are now reaching out to a broader audience for additional comment and support. Your response will be used to make adjustments to the Core Competencies.

The next step is to publish the results through TRB and outline a model curriculum as a tool for highway safety educators.

A comment form is available below. Details on the substance of each core competency are available when you click on "view". The site is set-up to allow you to view and comment on the entire set of core competencies or on each competency separately. We would very much appreciate your response by August 22, 2005. Thank you in advance for your interest, advice, and input to this important process.

Core Competencies for Highway Safety - View Entire Document | Comment

1. Understand the management of highway safety as both a complex multi-disciplinary field and one which must be understood systematically. View | Comment

2. Understand and explain the history of highway safety and the institutional setting in which safety management decisions are made. View | Comment

3. Understand the origins and characteristics of traffic safety data and information systems and their use in managing highway safety. View | Comment

4. Demonstrate the knowledge and skills to assess factors contributing to highway crashes, injuries and fatalities, identify potential countermeasures linked to the contributing factors, apply countermeasures to user groups or sites with promise of crash and injury reduction, and implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the countermeasures. View | Comment

5. Understand the comprehensive, collaborative approach necessary for developing and administering a highway safety management program. View | Comment

Comments for the Subcommittee on Safety Workforce Development - Submit Comment

Reference Document: Prevalence of Traffic Safety Content in Graduate Engineering and Public Health Programs

In the process of developing the core competencies a scan of university
highway/traffic safety degree programs, individual courses,
workshops/short courses was performed.  The results are included here
for your information.