GAO-06-916 Report entitled Truck Safety, Share the Road Safely Pilot Initiative Showed Promise, But the Program's Future Success Is Uncertain

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO

Report to Congressional Committees

September 2006

TRUCK SAFETY
Share the Road Safely
Pilot Initiative Showed
Promise, but the
Program’s Future
Success Is Uncertain

GAO-06-916

a

September 2006

TRUCK SAFETY
Accountability Integrity Reliability

Highlights
Highlights of GAO-06-916, a report to
congressional committees

Share the Road Safely Pilot Initiative
Showed Promise, but the Program's
Future Success Is Uncertain

Why GAO Did This Study

What GAO Found

In 2004, over 5,000 people died on
our nation’s roads in crashes
involving large trucks. The
Department of Transportation’s
(DOT) Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration (FMCSA)
operates truck safety programs,
including Share the Road Safely
(STRS), which has a goal to
improve driving behavior around
large trucks. At congressional
direction, the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) assumed responsibility
for funding STRS in 2004, but
returned STRS to FMCSA in 2006.
The current transportation
authorization bill requested GAO to
update its 2003 evaluation of STRS.
This report (1) describes the STRS
initiatives DOT has implemented
since 2003 and their design,
(2) reviews evaluations of STRS
initiatives, and (3) assesses DOT’s
plans for the future of STRS. GAO
interviewed DOT and state
officials, and reviewed program
plans and evaluations.

During 2004 and 2005, Share the Road Safely funding was used to implement
one initiative, a pilot in Washington State that focused on aggressive driving
behaviors near or by large trucks. Known as Ticketing Aggressive Cars and
Trucks (TACT), it combined education, such as highway message signs, and
high-visibility law enforcement to reduce aggressive driving. TACT received
about $892,000 in federal and state funds. TACT was generally modeled on
successful behavior modification programs, including Click It or Ticket (a
program to encourage safety belt use), but was more complex to implement
than past initiatives since many behaviors constitute aggressive driving and
Washington State lacked a single aggressive driving law. In addition, NHTSA
sought to demonstrate to FMCSA staff how to operate similar initiatives in
the future. To this end, FMCSA sent a liaison to NHTSA as requested by
Congress. Lastly, initiatives that were a part of STRS in 2003 were still
pursued by FMCSA, but were not funded.

What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends that the
Secretary of Transportation
develop a strategy for expanding
TACT-like initiatives, and
determine the best method for
using DOT’s resources and
expertise to modify driver
behavior. DOT officials clarified
and updated information in a draft
of this report and generally agreed
with the recommendations.

DOT and Washington State officials conducted an evaluation of TACT that
demonstrated that the initiative was successful and well-designed. The
evaluation found that TACT significantly reduced the number and severity of
unsafe driving acts near or by trucks. While the evaluation did not assess
changes in crashes, improved driver behavior should logically lead to fewer
crashes, injuries, and fatalities. GAO found that TACT’s design of combining
education with law enforcement better lent itself to reaching agency goals of
fatality reduction than previous STRS initiatives that were purely
educational.
FMCSA plans to expand development of new TACT-like initiatives, but lacks
resources and experience to do so. In addition, FMCSA plans to spend most
of its 2006 STRS funds on educational initiatives, which lack information
showing whether they improve driver behavior. In terms of TACT expansion,
FMCSA is currently developing a TACT-like pilot in Pennsylvania and plans
to roll out initiatives similar to TACT nationally by 2009. FMCSA, however,
has few people dedicated to education and outreach and lacks NHTSA’s
experience with behavior modification initiatives. While FMCSA designated
a liaison to learn about TACT-like initiatives, GAO continues to have concerns about FMCSA’s limited experience with these initiatives. NHTSA has
considerable experience with such initiatives, but its role in STRS is still
evolving. Finally, FMCSA plans to spend the majority of its fiscal year 2006
STRS funds on initiatives that do not have evaluations showing their
impacts.
Highway Message Sign and Law Enforcement Used in the Washington State Pilot Initiative

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-916.
To view the full product, including the scope
and methodology, click on the link above.
For more information, contact Katherine
Siggerud at (202) 512-2834 or
siggerudk@gao.gov.

Sources: Washington Traffic Safety Commission and the KOMO television station.

United States Government Accountability Office

Contents

Letter

1
4
7

Results in Brief
Background
During 2004 and 2005, the Share the Road Safely Program Funded a
Reasonably Designed Education and Enforcement Pilot in
Washington State
Evaluation of TACT Demonstrated Positive Results and Was
Generally Well-Designed
FMCSA Plans Expanded Development of High-Visibility Law
Enforcement Campaigns Similar to TACT, but Lacks a Clear
Strategy and Expertise
Conclusions
Recommendations for Executive Action
Agency Comments

23
29
30
30

Scope And Methodology

32

Appendix II:

TACT’s Implementation of the Click It or Ticket Model

34

Appendix III:

Description of TACT Methodology for Analyzing Video
Footage of Driver Behavior

35

Staff Acknowledgments

36

Table

Table 1: Planned STRS Outreach Activities for Fiscal Year 2006

28

Figures

Figure 1: Number of Vehicle Occupants Killed in Large-Truck
Crashes, by Vehicle Type (1995-2004)
Figure 2: TACT Intervention and Comparison Corridors in
Washington State
Figure 3: Television News Coverage Used for TACT
Figure 4: TACT Highway Sign
Figure 5: Rate of Violations per Observation Hour
Figure 6: Percentages of Survey Respondents That Saw or Heard
Media about Giving Trucks More Space
Figure 7: Expected Program Model Logic Results of TACT
Initiative
Figure 8: Planned STRS Funding for Fiscal Year 2006

11
17

Appendixes
Appendix I:

Appendix IV:

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GAO-06-916 Truck Safety

Contents

Abbreviations
DOT
FMCSA
MCSAP
NHTSA
SAFETEA-LU
STEP
STRS
TACT

Department of Transportation
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity
Act: A Legacy for Users
Selective Traffic Enforcement Program
Share the Road Safely
Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks

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A

United States Government Accountability Office
Washington, D.C. 20548

September 8, 2006

Leter

The Honorable Ted Stevens
Chairman
The Honorable Daniel K. Inouye
Co-Chairman
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
United States Senate
The Honorable Don Young
Chairman
The Honorable James L. Oberstar
Ranking Democratic Member
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
House of Representatives
In 2004, over 42,000 people died on our nation’s roads. About 12 percent
(5,190) of these fatalities occurred in collisions involving large commercial
trucks, in which many more occupants were killed in the other vehicles
than in the trucks. Furthermore, large-truck traffic has increased
significantly (33 percent) from 1994 through 2004. This trend seems likely
to continue as the Transportation Research Board estimates that truck
traffic will increase by 3.5 percent annually.1 However, according to the
Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Large Truck Crash Causation
Study,2 passenger-vehicle drivers were responsible for the majority of these
large commercial truck crashes. The study found that specific passengervehicle driver behaviors, such as driving too fast for road conditions and
making illegal maneuvers, contributed significantly to crashes involving
large commercial trucks.
Within DOT, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is
responsible for improving the safety of commercial-vehicle operations,
which include interstate truck and motor coach (bus) companies, while the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has a mission to
reduce deaths, injuries, and economic losses resulting from motor vehicle
crashes. FMCSA has set a safety goal to reduce the rate of fatalities from an
1
The Transportation Research Board did not establish a timeline for how long this increase
will last.
2

U.S. Department of Transportation, Report to Congress on the Large Truck Crash
Causation Study (Washington, D.C.: March 2006).

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estimated 2.81 per 100 million truck-miles traveled in 1996 to no more than
1.65 by the end of 2008. In 2004, the fatality rate for truck-related crashes
was 2.3 per 100 million truck-miles traveled. To work toward its 2008 goal,
FMCSA leads enforcement efforts such as working with and providing
grants to states to enforce Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. In
addition, FMCSA operates several education and outreach programs. Share
the Road Safely (STRS) is one such program that aims to support FMCSA’s
goal by educating and changing the driving behavior of both passengervehicle and truck drivers so that they may interact safely with one another
on the road.3 NHTSA sets and enforces safety standards for motor vehicles
and motor vehicle equipment and provides grants to states to improve
passenger-vehicle driver safety.
In recent years, we raised concerns about FMCSA’s education and outreach
efforts. In 2003, we reported that STRS lacked a clear program strategy and
included activities that were only tenuously linked to program goals.4 We
also reported that FMCSA had not recently evaluated the program’s
effectiveness. Consequently, we recommended that DOT ensure that STRS
initiatives are directly linked to the program’s goals, and that DOT establish
a systematic process for evaluating the program’s effectiveness. We also
suggested that FMCSA apply strategies used by other parts of DOT, such as
NHTSA, to its evaluations of STRS. In fiscal year 2004, Congress
transferred funding for the program to NHTSA, an agency that sets and
enforces safety standards for motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment
and provides grants to states to improve passenger-vehicle driver safety.
Additionally, the Conference Report accompanying the DOT appropriations
act for fiscal year 2004 indicates the conferees wanted NHTSA and FMCSA
to apply lessons learned from NHTSA’s experience with high-visibility law
enforcement campaigns to STRS to educate drivers on how to drive safely
around large trucks. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient
Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU)—which
authorized the federal surface transportation programs for highways,
highway safety, and transit between 2005 and 2009—annually provided $3
million to NHTSA and $1 million to FMCSA for administering education
and outreach activities associated with commercial-vehicle safety, such as

3

Other education and outreach activities include a safety belt program aimed at increasing
safety belt use among commercial drivers, and a new entrant program designed to inform
newly registered motor carriers about motor carrier safety standards and regulations.

4

GAO, Truck Safety: Share the Road Safely Program Needs Better Evaluation of Its
Initiatives, GAO-03-680 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 2003).

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STRS. The Conference Report accompanying the DOT appropriations act
for fiscal year 2006, however, indicates that the conferees allocated the
entire $4 million for education and outreach activities associated with
commercial-vehicle safety to FMCSA, including $500,000 for STRS
initiatives.
SAFETEA-LU also asked us to update our 2003 evaluation of STRS to
determine if the program has achieved reductions in the number and
severity of commercial motor vehicle crashes, including reductions in the
number of deaths and the severity of injuries sustained in these crashes. To
update our 2003 STRS report and assess the impact of the program on the
interaction between large commercial trucks and passenger vehicles, we
(1) describe what STRS initiatives DOT has implemented since 2003 and
assess whether its initiatives are reasonably designed; (2) review the
results of DOT evaluations of STRS initiatives and assess the evaluation
methods; and (3) assess DOT’s plans for the future of STRS initiatives.
To determine how STRS has changed since 2003 and whether the design of
its initiatives is reasonable, we interviewed DOT officials and reviewed
agency documents. Additionally, we interviewed FMCSA, NHTSA, and local
officials involved in the operation of the STRS pilot initiative in Washington
State and reviewed related program documents. We examined the design of
the Washington State pilot to determine how it compares with other
initiatives intended to modify driver behavior, and whether the pilot’s
activities links to agency goals. We did not assess the design of other STRS
initiatives because they were not funded in 2004 and 2005, and we reported
on these initiatives in our 2003 report. To determine what the evaluation of
STRS pilot initiative showed, we reviewed evaluation plans and evaluation
results and spoke with DOT and state officials responsible for conducting
the evaluation. We also compared DOT’s evaluation approach with
accepted evaluation methods. Although SAFETEA-LU asked us to
determine if STRS achieved reductions in the number of deaths and the
severity of injuries sustained in commercial-vehicle crashes, DOT’s
evaluation did not assess these outcomes because the number of fatalities
and injuries on DOT’s study corridors were too low to reliably measure any
appreciable change. Therefore, we did not discuss in this report STRS’s
impact on specific numbers of fatalities and injuries. To assess DOT’s
future plans for STRS, we interviewed program administrators at DOT and
reviewed provided budget and planning documents. We also compared the
planned initiatives (1) with high-visibility law enforcement campaign
models, shown to change behavior by prior research, to assess their
implementation and (2) with the initiatives described in our prior report to

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see how they have evolved. We conducted our review from October 2005
through July 2006 in accordance with generally accepted government
auditing standards. Appendix I provides additional details of our scope and
methodology.

Results in Brief

During fiscal years 2004 and 2005, the Share the Road Safely program
funded one initiative that focused primarily on trying to reduce aggressive
driving5 behavior associated with car and truck crashes in Washington
State. We found that this initiative was reasonably designed, and that it for
the most part followed a model that combines education with enforcement
activities. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission was the lead agency
on this pilot initiative, known as Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks
(TACT), with NHTSA providing significant implementation assistance and
approximately $565,000 in funding. FMCSA developed initial plans for a
multistate education and enforcement project, and after Congress provided
STRS funds to NHTSA, FMCSA worked with NHTSA and Washington State.
FMCSA also provided assistance for TACT that included initial crash
analyses, reviews of project plans, and $100,000 in grants for enforcement.
TACT centered on two, 2-week high-visibility law enforcement waves in
July and September, 2005, along with outreach efforts, such as television
news coverage and radio advertisements, to inform motorists of the
dangers of aggressive driving and of the program’s initiatives. TACT
planning documents state that the pilot was a high-visibility law
enforcement campaign patterned on the Selective Traffic Enforcement
Program (STEP) model, which combines educational and enforcement
activities and has been shown by prior research to be more effective at
changing driver behavior than education alone. NHTSA’s Click It or Ticket
safety belt campaign6 is an example of a successful high-visibility law
enforcement campaign that is based on the STEP model. Our analysis of
TACT’s implementation shows that it conformed to the high-visibility law
enforcement campaign used in NHTSA’s Click It or Ticket campaign, with a
couple of exceptions. For instance, the Click It or Ticket model calls for
television advertising, which TACT did not use because of its limited

5

In this report, “aggressive driving” refers specifically to unsafe driving acts involving cars
and trucks, such as making unsafe lane changes, following another vehicle too closely, and
speeding.
6

“Click It or Ticket” is a highway safety campaign that uses increased enforcement along
with a media campaign to encourage safety belt use.

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funding. Furthermore, although TACT was similar to other high-visibility
law enforcement campaigns, it dealt with more complex issues. For
example, Washington has no one specific law against aggressive driving, so
officials had to ensure that the courts would cooperate with TACT’s
enforcement efforts. By contrast, Washington’s laws specifically require
safety belt use; therefore, enforcement during Click It or Ticket campaigns
is more straightforward. To support the transfer of knowledge about
implementing high-visibility law enforcement campaigns from NHTSA to
FMCSA, the Conference Report accompanying the DOT appropriations act
for fiscal year 2005 expressed the conferees’ expectation that FMCSA
would detail one staff member to serve as a liaison to NHTSA. In response,
FMCSA hired a liaison who came aboard after the completion of TACT’s
last enforcement wave. Finally, other initiatives, such as educational
brochures, that were a part of STRS in our 2003 review were not funded in
2004 and 2005, but FMCSA continued to disseminate available education
and outreach materials.
DOT and Washington State officials conducted an evaluation of TACT that
demonstrated the pilot’s success in reducing aggressive driver behavior and
found that the initiative had an acceptable experimental design for making
this determination. Officials found reductions in the rates and seriousness
of unsafe driving acts when they analyzed video footage of driver behavior
before and after the pilot. Specifically, the rate of unsafe driving acts per
hour was cut almost in half. Additionally, surveys of motorists
demonstrated that TACT’s message of leaving more space around trucks
successfully reached its target audience. Furthermore, we found that the
evaluation was well-designed. It compared intervention groups that
received educational and enforcement efforts with comparison groups that
did not. This comparison enabled program administrators to attribute any
positive changes in driver behavior to TACT initiatives. TACT’s evaluation
design represents a positive step toward meeting our 2003
recommendation that DOT establish a systematic process for evaluating
the effectiveness of STRS. Although the TACT evaluation did not provide
data regarding the impact of the pilot on the number of crashes in the
corridors because those numbers were too low to assess, the evaluation
relied on intermediate measures such as improved driver behavior, which
should logically result in decreased crashes, injuries, and fatalities. In
addition, by combining education and enforcement, the pilot was better
designed to reach agency goals of improving driver behavior to reduce
fatalities than past STRS initiatives that were focused solely on educating
motorists on how trucks and cars should drive around each other, thereby

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making progress toward meeting our 2003 recommendation that STRS
initiatives link to STRS goals.
Given the success of the TACT initiative in improving driver behavior,
FMCSA is encouraging states to adopt TACT-like initiatives; however, the
extent to which FMCSA will be able to successfully develop and implement
these initiatives is uncertain. Furthermore, FMCSA’s STRS plans for fiscal
year 2006 focus on initiatives that are strictly educational, which research
has shown are more limited in their ability to improve driver behavior than
educational initiatives linked with enforcement. However, FMCSA plans to
evaluate the impact of these educational activities. FMCSA officials stated
that by fiscal year 2009, they plan a nationwide rollout of initiatives, like
TACT, that rely on education and enforcement to address poor driver
behavior around commercial trucks. In the interim, FMCSA is contracting
with Pennsylvania to conduct another TACT pilot, using primarily Motor
Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) grants and state funding.
FMCSA has recently set up a transition team of FMCSA and NHTSA staff to
help develop a plan for achieving its 2009 goal and to resolve issues such as
identifying a funding source for a nationwide program. In addition,
FMCSA’s limited experience in implementing such initiatives raises
concerns about its ability to develop and implement a nationwide program.
For example, FMCSA has few people dedicated to education and outreach
programs, and some officials commented that the agency lacks NHTSA’s
experience overseeing the implementation of behavior modification
initiatives. Also, one of these officials, the FMCSA liaison to NHTSA,
missed opportunities for learning about the operation of TACT and other
high-visibility law enforcement campaigns because of the time it took to fill
the position. Furthermore, although FMCSA announced that states could
apply for MCSAP funds to use for TACT-like initiatives, it did not provide
guidance on how to proceed, and applications for these funds in 2006 were
due before the evaluation of TACT was completed. Finally, FMCSA plans to
spend the majority of its $500,000 fiscal year 2006 STRS funds on enhancing
its Web site and sending brochures and other informational materials to
commercial- and passenger-vehicle drivers—initiatives that are strictly
educational. However, research has shown that the ability of educational
initiatives such as these to improve driver behavior is more limited than
when education is linked with enforcement. After we discussed our
findings with FMCSA, officials decided to ask its contractor to evaluate
these initiatives in fiscal year 2006, a year earlier than planned, with an
expected evaluation report completed by fiscal year 2007. However,
FMCSA has yet to identify specific performance goals and measures.

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We have concerns about the ability of the STRS initiatives to continue to
improve driver behavior, given FMCSA’s limited staff, experience, and
systematic plans for expanding high-visibility law enforcement campaigns
and its focus on educational initiatives. Therefore, we are recommending
that DOT continue to develop a comprehensive strategy to describe how it
will achieve its goal of implementing TACT nationwide, and how STRS
initiatives will contribute to this goal. We also recommend that the agency
complete and execute plans to evaluate STRS outreach activities that are
purely educational and discontinue activities where no impact can be
demonstrated. Lastly, we recommend that DOT monitor whether FMCSA
has sufficient staff and institutional experience to successfully develop and
implement future high-visibility law enforcement campaigns, and, if it does
not, determine how to use existing expertise within DOT to focus on and
support STRS initiatives that combine education and enforcement. In
commenting on a draft of this report, DOT officials generally agreed with
our recommendations. The officials also clarified and updated information,
such as the status of their evaluations, and provided technical comments,
which we incorporated as appropriate.

Background

The occupants of other vehicles are several times more likely to die in
crashes involving large commercial trucks than the occupants of the
trucks.7 From 1995 through 2004, there were 51,791 people killed in largetruck crashes. Of this total, 40,438 were occupants of other vehicles, while
7,131 were the occupants of large trucks and 4,222 were nonmotorists,
such as pedestrians. Figure 1 shows the number of passenger-vehicle and
large-truck occupants killed in collisions involving large trucks from 1995
through 2004, according to NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System. 8

7
In presenting information on traffic fatalities, we used the most recent available data
contained in NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System database. This database contains
state-reported data on all traffic-related fatalities in the United States.
8
In 2004, we presented information on traffic fatalities using data contained in NHTSA’s
Fatality Analysis Reporting System database. We determined that these data were
sufficiently reliable for reporting purposes. See GAO, Highway Safety: Federal and State
Efforts to Address Rural Road Safety Challenges, GAO-04-663 (Washington, D.C.: May 28,
2004).

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Figure 1: Number of Vehicle Occupants Killed in Large-Truck Crashes, by Vehicle
Type (1995-2004)
Number of fatalities
5,500
4,950
4,400
3,850
3,300
2,750
2,200
1,650
1,100
550
0
1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Year
Total occupants
Other vehicle occupants
Large-truck occupants
Source: NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov).

The Large Truck Crash Causation Study found behavior by drivers of
passenger vehicles and trucks responsible for the majority of these largetruck crashes. In a large majority of crashes involving a single truck and a
single passenger vehicle, driver behavior was deemed a critical reason for
the crash—about 88 percent when the critical reason was assigned to the
truck and about 89 percent when assigned to the passenger vehicle. The
remaining critical reasons are primarily related to the vehicle and
environment. The Large Truck Crash Causation Study lists driving too
fast for road conditions, making illegal maneuvers, and driving under work
pressure as factors contributing to crashes between large trucks and
passenger vehicles, but the study does not list a specific factor for
aggressive driving.
FMCSA’s education and outreach activities represent a small portion of its
total efforts to reduce fatalities caused by collisions involving large
commercial vehicles. FMCSA, established in 2000 as a separate

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administration under DOT by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of
1999, is responsible for improving the safety of commercial-vehicle
operations on the nation’s highways. The agency’s overall goal is to reduce
the rate of fatalities resulting from collisions involving large commercial
trucks from the 1996 rate of 2.8 fatalities per 100 million truck miles
traveled to 1.65 by 2008. FMCSA carries out its mission primarily through
regulatory and enforcement programs, including developing and enforcing
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, administering MCSAP grants to
states, and leading enforcement actions against operators who violate
regulations. FMCSA also undertakes education and outreach activities,
such as posting on its Web site regulations pertaining to the licensing of
commercial drivers or the transporting of hazardous materials, and is also
allocated funding for specific education and outreach programs. In fiscal
year 2006, education and outreach funding accounted for about $4 million
of FMCSA’s over $490 million budget. Also in fiscal year 2006, FMCSA plans
to use education and outreach funding for activities supporting its Safety
Belt program, which targeted commercial-vehicle drivers; public outreach
on hiring motor coach services; and consumer outreach on using
household goods movers, among other programs.
STRS is one education and outreach program intended to help reduce the
number of crashes involving large commercial vehicles. FMCSA assumed
responsibility for the program in 2000, when Congress established FMCSA.
STRS targeted all highway users and sought to modify driver behavior by
increasing their awareness of the inherent dangers of driving in and around
large commercial vehicles. STRS attempted to increase drivers’ awareness
of these dangers through a variety of channels, such as publishing
informational literature, developing material for driver’s education courses,
and issuing public service announcements. Additionally, FMCSA partnered
with public and private organizations nationwide to promote the STRS
mission. One of these partners, the American Trucking Association, now
operates its own independent Share the Road program that seeks to
educate the public through outreach and media events held in cities across
the nation.
In 2003, the House Report accompanying the DOT appropriations act asked
GAO to evaluate the effectiveness of the STRS initiatives. Our report found
that some STRS initiatives did not clearly link to the program’s goals, and
that evaluations of the program did not fully measure its outcomes. Our
review also noted that research shows that attempts to modify driver
behavior are more effective when educational activities are combined with
enforcement efforts. Subsequently, we recommended that DOT ensure that

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STRS initiatives directly link with the program’s goals, and that DOT
establish a systematic process for evaluating the effectiveness of the
program. We also suggested that FMCSA could apply strategies used by
other parts of DOT, such as NHTSA, to its evaluations of STRS. Such
strategies include measuring targeted knowledge, attitude, and behavior
changes before and after program exposure to assess change.
For fiscal years 2004 and 2005, Congress transferred funding for STRS from
FMCSA to NHTSA, with FMCSA retaining a supporting role. In the
Conference Report accompanying the DOT appropriations act for fiscal
year 2004, the conferees asked NHTSA to work with FMCSA to educate the
motoring public on how to share the road safely with commercial motor
vehicles. The appropriation asked NHTSA and FMCSA to apply lessons
learned from NHTSA’s experience in high-visibility law enforcement
campaigns to STRS initiatives to educate drivers on how to drive safety
around large trucks. NHTSA operates a number of programs intended to
promote safe behavior by passenger-vehicle drivers. One such program is
Click It or Ticket, which evaluations have shown to be effective at
increasing safety belt use by combining extensive paid and earned media9
coverage and high-visibility law enforcement waves. Furthermore, the
Conference Report accompanying the DOT appropriations act for fiscal
year 2005 expressed the conferees’ view that FMCSA should assign a staff
member to NHTSA to act as a liaison for STRS. FMCSA officials told us that
the rationale for establishing this liaison position was to transfer
knowledge to FMCSA on the operation of education and enforcement
campaigns.
NHTSA’s Click It or Ticket program is a high-visibility law enforcement
campaign that is based on the STEP model. According to NHTSA officials,
STEP is a model that the enforcement community uses to announce,
usually through press releases, some increase in enforcement of some
violation or identified problem area, such as not wearing a safety belt. Over
time, this model has become more sophisticated to include more and better
targeted media campaigns to announce enforcement. These media
campaigns should include both extensive (1) earned media that include
news coverage and (2) paid media, such as radio and television advertising,
to explain the problem the program is trying to address and the stepped up
enforcement. NHTSA officials refer to this more sophisticated version of a
STEP model as a high-visibility law enforcement campaign.
9

“Earned media” is positive news coverage that is used to reach a large audience.

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During 2004 and 2005,
the Share the Road
Safely Program Funded
a Reasonably Designed
Education and
Enforcement Pilot in
Washington State

During 2004 and 2005, NHTSA funded the Share the Road Safely program
and implemented an aggressive driving pilot initiative in Washington State.
Known as Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT), it combined
education and law enforcement activities in an effort to reduce aggressive
driving between passenger vehicles and trucks. Another objective of the
pilot was for NHTSA to show FMCSA staff how to operate similar
initiatives in the future. TACT generally conformed to the proven highvisibility law enforcement model, although it dealt with more complex
issues than previous high-visibility law enforcement campaigns. TACT’s
design and implementation linked to the STRS goal of changing driver
behavior, whereas past STRS initiatives sometimes did not link to goals or
were not designed to maximize the potential for success. In addition,
Congress requested FMCSA to use a liaison to facilitate the transfer of
knowledge about high-visibility law enforcement campaigns from NHTSA
to FMCSA. Lastly, educational initiatives that were a part of STRS in 2003
were pursued by FMCSA, although not funded under NHTSA in 2004 and
2005.

DOT Helped Establish and
Operate an Aggressive
Driving Pilot Initiative in
Washington State

According to DOT officials, Share the Road Safely program funding has
supported an aggressive driving pilot initiative in Washington State starting
in 2004. In 2004, DOT selected Washington State for the pilot initiative and
signed a cooperative agreement with the Washington Traffic Safety
Commission. The pilot, known as TACT, combined high-visibility law
enforcement waves with education and outreach activities in an effort to
reduce aggressive driving between passenger-vehicle and large-truck
drivers. TACT focused on four interstate highway corridors, each covering
a distance of approximately 25 miles. (See fig. 2.) Two intervention
corridors in the western part of the state received media messages and 2
weeks of increased, high-visibility law enforcement waves in July and
September, 2005, while two comparison corridors did not. During these
waves, law enforcement officers patrolled the intervention corridors in
marked and unmarked patrol cars, in state patrol aerial units when weather
permitted, and from the cabs of semitrucks to target unsafe driving around
large trucks.

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Figure 2: TACT Intervention and Comparison Corridors in Washington State
Bellingham

Everett
Spokane

Seattle

Olympia

Tacoma

90

5

Longview

Vancouver
Intervention corridors
Comparison corridors
Source: GAO depiction of NHTSA graphic.

The TACT pilot initiative used paid radio advertising and earned media,
such as local news coverage, to inform the targeted audience of the
dangers of aggressive driving related to trucks and to announce that law
enforcement officers would issue tickets for such behavior. TACT’s radio
advertisement was aired over 6,000 times during the course of the
enforcement waves, and eight local television stations dedicated coverage
to the pilot. Figure 3 shows an example of the earned media coverage.

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Figure 3: Television News Coverage Used for TACT

Sources: Washington Traffic Safety Commission and the KOMO television station.

DOT officials said they selected Washington State to participate in this pilot
because of the state’s experience with other related safety initiatives, its
accurate fatality and crash database, and its strong relationships with key
stakeholders. TACT built upon a previous STEP model campaign, Step Up
and R.I.D.E.,10 which operated in Washington for several years. In the Step
Up and R.I.D.E. program, Washington partnered with the local trucking
industry to periodically place police officers in commercial vehicles to
identify and issue citations to drivers observed committing offenses. DOT
officials also stated that Washington has shown itself capable of
successfully implementing and evaluating a high-visibility law enforcement
campaign—specifically its Click It or Ticket campaign, which in 2002
increased safety belt use from about 80 percent to 95 percent. Additionally,
DOT cited Washington as having good data on crashes and fatalities. In a
2005 report, we also recognized that Washington has very good cooperation
among state agencies involved in crash data collection and reporting, and a
strong relationship with its FMCSA division office.11 Finally, according to
DOT officials, a particular strength of Washington is that the Washington
Traffic Safety Commission, the lead organization in implementing the TACT
initiative, comprises multiple state agencies, including all of the agencies
that are participating in TACT, thus setting the stage for easy coordination
and cooperation among participating agencies.

10

“R.I.D.E.” stands for Reduce Injuries through Driver Education.

11

GAO, Highway Safety: Further Opportunities Exist to Improve Data on Crashes
Involving Commercial Motor Vehicles, GAO-06-102 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 18, 2005).

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Federal, state, and local organizations participated in and contributed
about $892,000 for the planning and operation of TACT. A steering
committee led by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission planned and
administered the pilot project. Other partners on the steering committee
included the Washington DOT, the Washington State Patrol, the Association
of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, and the Washington Trucking Association.
Officials on the steering committee believed having all of these groups
involved in developing the pilot was important to the successful
implementation of the pilot. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission
also contributed $118,000 to the pilot for project management and
communications. Local and state police made officers available for the
enforcement waves, and the Washington Trucking Association worked with
trucking companies to provide decoy trucks and drivers. NHTSA provided
considerable assistance in developing and implementing the initiative and
supplied the majority of TACT’s funding, awarding $497,000 in fiscal year
2004 and an additional $68,000 for evaluation activities in fiscal year 2005.
Congress also provided NHTSA with an additional $99,000 for the TACT
initiative in fiscal year 2005. FMCSA did TACT’s initial planning and
provided ongoing assistance, including reviewing plans. It also provided
$100,000 in fiscal year 2005 for TACT’s enforcement efforts through
MCSAP.12

FMCSA Sought to Learn
How to Operate a HighVisibility Law Enforcement
Campaign

DOT officials told us that a goal for FMCSA in the TACT initiative was to
gain institutional knowledge on the operation of high-visibility law
enforcement campaigns, such as Click It or Ticket. These campaigns
combine education and outreach activities with high-visibility law
enforcement to bring about a change in driver behavior. Our 2003 report
stated that highway safety experts agree that attempts to modify behavior
are more effective when educational and enforcement efforts are used
together. However, the STRS initiatives we identified in our 2003 report
were purely educational.13 The report added that FMCSA could improve
STRS by drawing from NHTSA’s considerable experience with highvisibility law enforcement campaigns like Click It or Ticket, which has been

12

MCSAP is a federal grant program that provides financial assistance to states to reduce the
number and severity of accidents and hazardous materials incidents involving commercial
motor vehicles. The goal of this program is to reduce commercial-vehicle accidents,
fatalities, and injuries by investing grant monies in appropriate commercial-vehicle safety
programs.

13

GAO-03-680.

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widely considered effective in increasing the rate of safety belt use.
Furthermore, a NHTSA evaluation report found that 10 states that used the
Click It or Ticket model had significantly greater increases in safety belt
use compared with states that attempted to increase safety belt use
through other initiatives. TACT offered FMCSA an opportunity to learn
from NHTSA’s experience with high-visibility law enforcement campaigns
and learn how to develop similar aggressive driving initiatives in other
states. To further ensure this transfer of knowledge as requested by
conferees in the Conference Report accompanying its 2005 appropriations
act, FMCSA hired and detailed a staff member to NHTSA to act as a
communications liaison for STRS. The liaison was involved in some facets
of TACT, including meeting with its steering committee and preparing
briefings on the pilot. According to DOT officials, however, the liaison
came aboard after the completion of the last enforcement wave—later in
this report, we discuss this matter further in relation to the future of STRS
initiatives.

Pilot Generally Conformed
to the Proven High-Visibility
Law Enforcement Campaign
Model with Some Variation,
but Dealt with More
Complex Issues

Our analysis of TACT’s design and implementation shows that it generally
conformed to the high-visibility law enforcement campaign model as
intended, but varied in a few aspects. Specifically, TACT was modeled after
NHTSA’s Click It or Ticket campaign. In modeling Click It or Ticket’s
approach, officials in the TACT program collected data before and after its
enforcement waves to identify behavior changes; it had highly visible
enforcement on each day of its enforcement waves; and it had used both
paid and earned media to publicize its enforcement.
TACT did deviate from the Click It or Ticket model in two ways. First, the
pilot did not use paid television advertising. Washington State officials
explained that this was because of the program’s limited budget. While
evaluations of Click It or Ticket show that radio advertisements were
effective in reaching the motoring public, radio is not as effective a medium
as television. Second, the media for the TACT pilot described the
enforcement campaign as zero tolerance as prescribed by the Click It or
Ticket model, and enforcement was stepped up; however, law enforcement
officers participating in TACT issued warnings instead of citations in 28
percent of the traffic stops. NHTSA officials explained that law
enforcement officers always have discretion on whether to issue citations,
and what is more important is that the public perceive an increase in law
enforcement. Furthermore, they explained there is no research about the
most effective level of citation tickets. See appendix II for a detailed
comparison of TACT’s implementation of the Click It or Ticket model.

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Although TACT is based on the high-visibility law enforcement campaign
model, it deals with more complex issues than previous initiatives. In the
case of Click It or Ticket, law enforcement is simply checking for safety
belt use. With TACT, there are a number of behaviors that may constitute
aggressive driving, including tailgating, speeding, and unsafe merging.
These multiple factors also made it more difficult to develop a primary
message for TACT to communicate to the public. TACT administrators, for
example, determined that they had to choose a primary behavioral theme—
leaving more space around trucks—to communicate to motorists, although
obeying the speed limit and staying out of a truck’s blind spots also are
important and were secondary themes. See figure 4 for a depiction of
TACT’s selected message. This message was posted on 16 highway signs in
the intervention corridors. Additionally, TACT was more difficult to
institute from a legal standpoint. Washington has a primary safety belt law,
meaning that officers can pull over drivers solely for not wearing their
safety belts. In the case of TACT, however, Washington has no single
aggressive driving law. Washington State officials told us they had to ensure
that courts would be willing to enforce the tickets because police officers
issued citations for violations under a number of laws.

Figure 4: TACT Highway Sign

Source: Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

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Previous STRS Initiatives
Were Not Funded under
NHTSA

In fiscal years 2004 and 2005, STRS did not fund initiatives that were a part
of the program in 2003. All STRS funds in fiscal years 2004 and 2005 were
directed to the TACT pilot. According to FMCSA officials, however, they
continued to disseminate education and outreach materials. For instance,
the No-Zone campaign—a major initiative of STRS—was not funded during
this period.14 FMCSA did, however, keep No-Zone information available on
its Web site and responded to requests for educational material. For
example, according to FMCSA officials, during this period they distributed
over 200,000 copies of the No-Zone brochure through venues such as
conferences and industry events. Also prior to TACT, FMCSA developed a
curriculum for teaching students about sharing the road with trucks.
FMCSA completed work on the curriculum and produced a video for the
course, and it distributed the materials during fiscal years 2004 and 2005,
including 1,500 copies of the video.

Evaluation of TACT
Demonstrated Positive
Results and Was
Generally WellDesigned

DOT and Washington State officials conducted an evaluation of TACT that
demonstrated the initiative’s success and was generally well-designed.
Specifically, analysis of videotaped driver behavior showed reductions in
aggressive driving, and targeted motorists reported significant exposure to
the initiative’s message. Additionally, the evaluation followed accepted
experimental design principles by comparing changes on two intervention
highway corridors, which were exposed to the initiative’s message and
enforcement, with changes on two comparison highway corridors, which
were not exposed to the message. This experimental setup enabled
program administrators to attribute positive changes in driver behavior to
TACT initiatives. The evaluation did not assess changes in crashes, but
increased driver awareness and improved driver behavior should logically
lead to reduced crashes, injuries, and fatalities. Also, TACT’s design of
combining education outreach with law enforcement better lent itself to
reaching STRS goals than previous initiatives that were purely educational.

TACT Improved Driver
Behavior and Public
Awareness

The TACT evaluation demonstrated that the initiative was able to produce
improvements in driver behavior. TACT evaluated changes in driver
behavior by recording video footage of drivers in the four corridors and
using three groups of reviewers—police officers, truck drivers, and
14

The No-Zone campaign was intended to educate passenger car drivers to keep out of
trucks’ blind spots.

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Washington Traffic Safety Commission staff—to rate the seriousness of any
unsafe driving acts. (See app. III for a more detailed explanation of how
this video footage was analyzed.) This analysis found that the rate of unsafe
driving acts per observation hour was nearly cut in half, from 5.80 to 3.05,
for the intervention corridors, as compared with a slight decrease, from
4.03 to 3.92, for the comparison corridor. When controlled for the
preenforcement rates, these data represent a 46 percent decrease in unsafe
driving in the intervention corridors. The comparison corridors also had
1.85 times as many violations per hour than the intervention corridors
when the data are controlled for the corridors’ respective violation rates
prior to enforcement. (Fig. 5 shows the rate of violations per observation
hour.) Also, analysis of driver behavior in the intervention corridors found
that crash risk decreased and driver behavior was less illegal and less
intimidating, among other things.

Figure 5: Rate of Violations per Observation Hour
Violations per hour of video
6

5

4

3

2

1

0
Intervention

Comparison

Corridor type
Pre-TACT initiative
Post-TACT initiative
Sources: Washington Traffic Safety Commission and NHTSA.

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The TACT initiative improved driver behavior by successfully reaching its
intended audience. TACT evaluators demonstrated this by using a survey to
measure the extent to which the initiative changed the awareness of the
target audience. In each of the four communities selected for the project,
TACT administrators distributed surveys to the public at driver licensing
offices both before and after the enforcement waves. For example, the
percentage of respondents on the intervention corridors that reported
general exposure to media about giving trucks more space nearly
quadrupled, from about 18 to 67 percent. These data contrast with data for
the comparison corridors, where the percentage only increased from about
17 to 20 percent. (Fig. 6 shows the percentages of respondents that
reported hearing or seeing TACT-related media outreach.) Additionally, the
evaluation found significant increases in the percentages of respondents on
the intervention corridors that specifically reported hearing the radio
message and seeing the TACT road sign, television, and newspaper
messages. Furthermore, surveys of drivers also showed a significant
increase in drivers reporting that they leave more space when passing
trucks (the intended behavioral change theme of the project) from about 16
to 24 percent for the intervention corridors as compared with a slight
increase from about 15 to 16 percent for the comparison corridors.

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Figure 6: Percentages of Survey Respondents That Saw or Heard Media about
Giving Trucks More Space
Percentage of respondents who saw or heard media
70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Intervention

Comparison

Corridor type
Pre-TACT initiative
Post-TACT initiative
Sources: Washington Traffic Safety Commission and NHTSA.

The Evaluation of TACT
Was Generally WellDesigned and Links Results
to Its Intended Goal of
Crash Reduction

We found that the evaluation of TACT was generally well-designed, since it
appropriately used an experimental design to attribute outcomes to TACT’s
initiatives. An experimental design permits researchers to attribute
outcomes to the effects of the program and rule out other influences. Often
with this kind of evaluation design, the participants in the intervention
group are exposed to the initiative, while similar participants in the
comparison group are unexposed. Aside from the initiative, participants
experience the same influences. That is, they face conditions that are alike
during the same period. More specifically, the evaluation of the TACT
initiative exposed drivers in the intervention corridors to paid and earned
media and high-visibility law enforcement waves, while simultaneously
leaving unexposed comparable drivers in similar comparison corridors.
Then the evaluation compared outcomes in the two groups. This procedure
was repeated in two additional corridors to make sure that any detected
differences in outcomes were not unique to the first two corridors. Our

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2003 review of STRS recommended that DOT establish a systematic
process for evaluating the effectiveness of the program. Therefore, the
evaluation of TACT’s methodology represents a positive step toward
meeting our 2003 recommendation.
The evaluation report concludes that the initiative was a success, but it did
not report on TACT’s effect on the long-term results of the initiative, such
as the impact on the number of crashes, despite earlier plans to do so. Both
TACT implementation plans and a NHTSA official stated that the evaluation
would assess the impact of the initiative on the number of crashes in the
intervention corridors. However, as the evaluation report states, it is
difficult to determine changes in crashes given the low number of crashes
in Washington State; therefore, intermediate measures for evaluating the
initiative had to be relied upon. NHTSA officials stated that although the
evaluation was unable to report on long-term results, the program’s finding
of improved driver behavior around trucks would logically indicate an
expected decrease in truck-related crashes, injuries, and fatalities.
Furthermore, NHTSA does not evaluate individual Click It or Ticket
campaigns, which are considered to successfully modify behavior, for their
effect on long-term results such as fatality reduction.15 Figure 7 shows how
TACT linked short-term results (such as awareness and knowledge of the
dangers of driving around trucks) and intermediate results (such as
changed driver behavior around trucks) to the long-term results of fewer
truck-related crashes, injuries, and fatalities.

15

NHTSA has conducted research illustrating that manual, 3-point safety belts reduce the
fatality risk of front-seat occupants of passenger vehicles by 45 percent, relative to an
unrestrained occupant.

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Figure 7: Expected Program Model Logic Results of TACT Initiative

Initiative

TACT

Short-term
results

Intermediate
results

Long-term
results

Awareness, knowledge,
and attitudes

Behavior, practice,
and policies

Conditions

Motorists learn of the
dangers of aggressive
driving around trucks
and the potential to
receive a ticket for
noncompliance

Motorists drive
more carefully and
less aggressively
around trucks

Reduction in crashes,
injuries, and fatalities

Source: GAO analysis of Program Logic Model and TACT design and evaluation plans. Model adapted from Ellen Taylor-Powell,
The Logic Model: A Program Performance Framework (University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension: Madison, WI).

TACT Is Better Designed to
Successfully Reach Agency
Goals Than Past STRS
Initiatives

The design of TACT provided a better opportunity for successfully reaching
desired results and goals than past STRS initiatives. Our 2003 report on
STRS found that some of FMCSA’s education and outreach initiatives were
not directly connected to agency goals and recommended that future
initiatives be so connected. While program initiatives that exclusively rely
on education and outreach, such as distributing informational pamphlets or
advertising, can increase awareness and encourage the intended behaviors,
thereby linking to a program’s goals, attempts to modify the behaviors of
drivers are more effective when educational initiatives are combined with
enforcement. This conclusion is supported by the evaluation of past
initiatives to change driver behavior, particularly of efforts to increase
safety belt use.16 For example, a 2002 study by NHTSA included data from
Texas, which showed that while the baseline percentage of individuals
wearing safety belts (80 percent) increased slightly with advertising alone,
the combination of advertising and enforcement caused the number to
increase another 6 percent. TACT’s use of media, road signs, and other

16

GAO, Highway Safety: Effectiveness of State .08 Blood Alcohol Laws, GAO/RCED-99-179
(Washington, D.C.: June 23, 1999); and Motor Vehicle Safety: Comprehensive State
Programs Offer Best Opportunity for Increasing Use of Safety Belts, GAO/RCED-96-24
(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 3, 1996). See also Lund, Adrian K. and Allan F. Williams, A Review of
the Literature Evaluating the Defensive Driving Course, Accident Analysis and Prevention
17:6 (1985); Carolyn B. Liban et al., The Canadian Drinking-Driving Countermeasure
Experience, Accident Analysis and Prevention 19:3 (1987); and James B. Jacobs, Drunk
Driving, An American Dilemma (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

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educational outreach tools therefore directly linked to the STRS goal of
decreasing unsafe driver behavior around commercial vehicles by truck
drivers and passenger-vehicle drivers, and incorporating high-visibility law
enforcement increased the initiative’s potential for successfully reaching
that goal. In effect, TACT represents a positive step toward meeting our
2003 recommendation that STRS initiatives clearly link to STRS goals.

FMCSA Plans
Expanded
Development of HighVisibility Law
Enforcement
Campaigns Similar to
TACT, but Lacks a
Clear Strategy and
Expertise

Following the success of TACT in Washington State, FMCSA is developing
plans encouraging states to adopt similar initiatives in other states;
however, its strategy for expanding TACT and its ability to manage these
initiatives remain unknown. FMCSA officials stated that they plan a
nationwide rollout of initiatives similar to TACT by 2009, and that in the
interim, they are currently developing another TACT pilot in Pennsylvania.
FMCSA, however, has yet to articulate a strategy for expanding TACT into a
nationwide program or to identify funding. Additionally, FMCSA’s ability to
administer future TACT initiatives is uncertain, since FMCSA has limited
experience with high-visibility law enforcement campaigns. Finally,
FMCSA plans to spend the majority of its STRS funds on initiatives that are
purely educational, even though little information is available to show that
these activities will improve driver behavior and contribute to reducing
fatalities.

FMCSA Plans to Implement
More TACT-Like Initiatives
but Has Yet to Articulate Its
Strategy

FMCSA plans to expand initiatives similar to TACT to new states and,
eventually, nationwide. FMCSA officials stated that they plan to issue a
Federal Register notice in fiscal year 2008 before rolling out TACT on a
nationwide basis in 2009. In the interim, FMCSA is currently developing
plans to implement another TACT pilot in Pennsylvania, using primarily
MCSAP grants and state funds. There, FMCSA will contract with the
Pennsylvania State Police to develop and operate a high-visibility law
enforcement campaign in at least two intervention corridors and two
comparison corridors in an area with a high concentration of commercialvehicle fatalities and crashes. Pennsylvania will also be responsible for
evaluating its pilot. Agency officials anticipate this pilot taking 18 months
to complete. FMCSA also plans to conduct two additional pilots in fiscal

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year 2007, but has not yet identified states.17 Additionally, FMCSA issued a
Federal Register notice in March 2006 stating that states could use MCSAP
High Priority grants18 to comply with provisions of SAFETEA-LU that
require states to conduct comprehensive and highly visible traffic
enforcement and commercial-vehicle safety inspection programs in highrisk locations and areas. FMCSA added that these initiatives could be
similar to TACT.
FMCSA officials stated that they will develop guidance for states to follow,
but gaps remain in their strategy for expanding TACT nationwide. Agency
documents state that the Washington State TACT pilot and the future
Pennsylvania initiative will form the foundation of a best practices guide to
share with states. However, FMCSA has yet to articulate how it will expand
TACT from several planned pilot initiatives in 2007 to a nationwide
program 2 years later, or how this expansion will be funded. Additionally,
although FMCSA enabled states to apply for MCSAP High Priority grants to
develop initiatives similar to TACT, FMCSA did not provide states with the
guidance to do so. Applications for these funds were due before the
Washington TACT evaluation report was published; therefore, states
seeking to begin similar initiatives needed to design their own initiatives
without the benefit of Washington’s experience. Finally, FMCSA officials
stated that no state applied for a fiscal year 2006 grant before the
application deadline in the Federal Register; however, FMCSA will accept
applications until the end of fiscal year 2006 or until the available funds are
awarded.
Although FMCSA has plans for a nationwide expansion of TACT, the
majority of FMCSA’s STRS funds will be spent on other activities. Program
planning documents state that FMCSA has decided to transition STRS to
focus on developing initiatives similar to TACT in other states, but FMCSA

17

FMCSA has since informed us that Kentucky and Florida have expressed interest in
conducting additional pilots similar to TACT. FMCSA officials told us that they have
contacted these states, but the officials did not indicate if theses states will conduct TACTlike initiatives.
18

FMCSA generally provides MCSAP High Priority grants to support, enrich, or evaluate
state commercial motor vehicle safety programs and to accomplish the following five
objectives: (1) implement, promote, and maintain national programs to improve commercial
motor vehicle safety, (2) increase compliance with commercial motor vehicle safety
regulations, (3) increase public awareness concerning commercial motor vehicle safety, (4)
provide education on commercial motor vehicle safety and related issues, and (5)
demonstrate new safety-related technologies.

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plans to invest just $150,000 of its $500,000 fiscal year 2006 STRS budget to
do this.19 FMCSA officials told us that STRS funds would pay for the
evaluation component of this initiative, and FMCSA will supplement
activities with MCSAP funds. The $150,000 fiscal year 2006 STRS
investment in these future initiatives is significantly less than the
approximately $664,000 in STRS funds provided solely to TACT in fiscal
years 2004 and 2005.

FMCSA’s Ability to Manage
Future Initiatives Is Unclear
and NHTSA’s Role Is Still
Evolving

FMCSA’s ability to administer future high-visibility law enforcement
campaigns and NHTSA’s role in future STRS initiatives are unclear. As we
previously mentioned, a goal of the TACT pilot was for FMCSA to learn
about the operation of high-visibility enforcement programs from NHTSA,
and to support this goal, FMCSA detailed a liaison to NHTSA following
congressional direction. FMCSA, however, missed valuable opportunities
for learning because of the time it took to fill the position, since the liaison
came aboard late in the TACT program and returned to FMCSA before
NHTSA conducted its annual Click It or Ticket enforcement campaign.20
After discussing our findings with FMCSA officials, they clarified that other
FMCSA staff participated in TACT and knowledge transfer was not limited
to the liaison.
Furthermore, NHTSA’s participation in future STRS activities is still
evolving. As we previously mentioned, SAFETEA-LU authorized $3 million
to NHTSA and $1 million annually to FMCSA for administering education
and outreach activities associated with commercial-vehicle safety for the 4year period from 2006 through 2009. However, the Conference Report
accompanying the DOT appropriations act for fiscal year 2006 indicates
that the conferees did not fund the amounts authorized. Instead, they
funded $4 million to FMCSA alone for these purposes. Given its limited
experiences with programs designed to modify driver behavior, however,
FMCSA’s plans call for continuing cooperation with NHTSA in future

19

Consistent with language in the Conference Report accompanying the DOT appropriations
act for fiscal year 2006, FMCSA plans to spend $500,000 on STRS. Conferees expected that
at least $500,000 would be spent on the Share the Road Safely program.
20

Initially, a NHTSA official working with this liaison stated that the liaison did not spend
sufficient time at NHTSA and should have stayed longer to gain more exposure to Click It or
Ticket. Later, however, FMCSA officials told us that the liaison would be attending NHTSA’s
planning meetings leading up to the annual Click It or Ticket campaign.

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aggressive driving programs. For example, staff in FMCSA’s Washington
Divisional Office told us that their agency lacks NHTSA’s experience with
initiatives that change driver behavior and does not have staff with a
background in the area, especially at the division office level. This is
important because TACT’s evaluation report states that having an
experienced evaluation team that can develop and implement a
comprehensive evaluation design was critical to the success of the project.
As we previously mentioned, NHTSA has experience in operating
successful campaigns to increase safe behavior by motorists. Additionally,
FMCSA has only a small number of staff dedicated to its education and
outreach programs. NHTSA staff with whom we spoke initially stated that
the agency’s involvement will end with the issuance of the TACT program
evaluation report. Currently, however, NHTSA staff said they will provide
FMCSA with general assistance, and FMCSA has formed a transition team
to help ensure that the necessary expertise will be available to future
initiatives. NHTSA officials added that specific experience with behavioral
issues is not required to replicate the TACT initiative. They said that a
program plan, a media plan, an enforcement plan, and an evaluation plan
are required.

FMCSA’s Short-term Plans
Focus on Initiatives That Do
Not Include Enforcement
and That Have Not Been
Shown to Be Effective

FMCSA plans to spend the majority of its 2006 STRS funds on updating the
STRS Web site and producing outreach materials. These funds will be spent
on initiatives that have limited potential for reducing fatalities and provide
limited opportunities for evaluation, representing a return to an earlier era
of STRS. FMCSA will spend $200,000 in updating its Web site, $100,000 on
education and outreach materials promoting sharing the road, and $50,000
on printing. FMCSA plans to update its Web site with information on
preventing aggressive driving, which will include Spanish-language
content. The Web site also will include a user survey to gauge satisfaction
and will be able to ask up to five questions about a user’s knowledge of
STRS initiatives. Currently, FMCSA can only collect information on the
number of visits to the Web site. In addition, FMCSA plans to distribute
education and outreach materials promoting sharing the road. These
initiatives were not financially supported during fiscal years 2004 and 2005,
when NHTSA had responsibility for STRS. As we previously stated, purely
educational initiatives may conceptually link to FMCSA’s goal of reducing
accidents and fatalities, but initiatives such as TACT have a better potential
to improve driver behavior by incorporating local enforcement efforts with
educational outreach. Figure 8 shows four categories of FMCSA’s planned
STRS spending in fiscal year 2006. Table 1 lists FMCSA’s planned outreach
activities within two of these categories.

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Figure 8: Planned STRS Funding for Fiscal Year 2006

Strictly educational
STRS Web-site enhancements
($200,000)
Printing costs
($50,000)

10%
20%
40%

30%

Outreach materials (brochures, posters)
($100,000)

Assist states with implementing new
TACT-like programs
($150,000)

Total $500,000
Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA documents.

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Table 1: Planned STRS Outreach Activities for Fiscal Year 2006
STRS initiatives

Activities

Web site enhancements

Incorporate information on Washington State TACT into the
Web site, including radio advertisements.
Develop and post press releases, radio scripts, and radio
public service announcements that states can use to raise
awareness about driving safely near trucks.
Implement a customer satisfaction survey on the STRS
Web site.
Update the No-Zone Web page.

Outreach materials

Revise and distribute the brochures entitled the
Professional Driver (for truck drivers) and the Smart Driver
(for car drivers). Place Spanish versions on the STRS Web
site.
Develop a script for a public service announcement that
states can use to support TACT communication efforts.
Distribute STRS radio spots to be aired in the 10 states with
the highest truck crash, injury, and fatality rates.
Update and disseminate model training curriculum for
teaching students about sharing the road with commercial
motor vehicles.
Update No-Zone campaign materials.

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA documents.

It is unclear if evaluations of these planned STRS education and outreach
activities will provide meaningful insight into their effectiveness. FMCSA
officials told us that they hired a contractor to develop evaluations of STRS
education and outreach activities, but plans to evaluate the impact of these
activities on fatality and injury rates have yet to be developed. This
contractor will be required to (1) develop an evaluation study that gathers
baseline data and (2) assess whether the education and outreach materials
and activities reached the intended audience, changed attitudes and
behaviors, and helped the program meet its safety goals. However, in
discussing these plans, a NHTSA official told us that it will be difficult to
measure the impact of educational materials on driver behavior.
Furthermore, in our 2003 report, we stated that previous evaluations of
STRS activities shed little light on their short-term, intermediate, and longterm outcomes. This was due, in part, to FMCSA’s heavy reliance on selfreported data and to FMCSA’s not establishing a baseline of driver behavior

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and knowledge before the program started. By contrast, TACT’s evaluation
visually assessed driver behavior before and after motorists received
education and enforcement. If FMCSA cannot evaluate the effect of these
activities on driver behavior, then the planned activities may represent a
return to the practices that we questioned in our 2003 report.

Conclusions

The TACT initiative represented a significant departure from previous
STRS initiatives and, by following the high-visibility law enforcement
campaign model, incorporated program elements that experts believe are
most effective in changing driver behavior. Its systematic evaluation and
clear link to agency goals were important steps toward addressing
concerns with STRS that we raised in the past. Furthermore, the positive
results shown by the TACT evaluation and the ongoing problem of crashes
between trucks and passenger vehicles demonstrate that there is merit in
further developing and implementing high-visibility law enforcement
campaigns similar to TACT. FMCSA’s plans for future aggressive driving
initiatives are still evolving, but the agency is currently developing a second
pilot in Pennsylvania and has a goal of rolling out TACT-like initiatives
nationwide in 2009. However, FMCSA has yet to develop a clear strategy
describing how it will expand initiatives similar to TACT from a series of
pilots into a nationwide program or to describe how these programs will be
funded.
Furthermore, some of FMCSA’s plans for addressing unsafe driving do not
focus on expanding education and enforcement initiatives such as TACT.
Instead, FMCSA has chosen to spend the majority of its fiscal year 2006
STRS funds on initiatives that are purely educational, which safety experts
agree are less effective than when educational outreach is combined with
enforcement. Because FMCSA has not identified a cohesive strategy to
expand TACT and not focused on proven approaches such as high-visibility
law enforcement campaigns, it is unclear how FMCSA’s STRS initiatives
will contribute to FMCSA’s goal of expanding TACT and reducing crashes
and fatalities.
Finally, there are doubts about FMCSA’s ability to ensure the success of
STRS in the future. Although funding responsibility for STRS returned to
FMCSA in 2006 and FMCSA participated in the initial planning for TACT,
NHTSA and the Washington Traffic Safety Commission significantly
supported TACT’s implementation and evaluation. Additionally, FMCSA
may have missed valuable opportunities to learn about the operation of
TACT and other similar programs because its involvement was limited by

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GAO-06-916 Truck Safety

not being able to use its legislatively mandated liaison to the fullest extent
possible. DOT, through staff from both NHTSA and FMCSA, demonstrated
that it has the ability to develop state initiatives that change driver behavior
around trucks by successfully implementing TACT. Even so, it is uncertain
that DOT will effectively use these resources in the future, given that the
relationship between NHTSA and FMCSA is still evolving and that FMCSA
has limited staff and experience in administering high-visibility law
enforcement campaigns.

Recommendations for
Executive Action

To ensure that the Share the Road Safely program continues to improve
driver behavior around commercial vehicles, thereby potentially reducing
fatalities, we recommend that the Secretary of Transportation direct the
Administrators of the appropriate agencies to take the following three
steps:
• develop a comprehensive strategy describing how FMCSA will
implement and fund an expansion of TACT-like initiatives from several
pilots into a nationwide program and detail how STRS initiatives
contribute to this goal;
• complete and execute plans to evaluate STRS outreach activities that
are purely educational and discontinue activities with no demonstrable
impact on behavior; and
• monitor whether FMCSA has sufficient staff and expertise to
successfully develop and administer future high-visibility law
enforcement campaigns, and, if it does not, determine the best methods
for DOT to use its resources and expertise to modify driver behavior and
address the problem of aggressive driving around trucks.

Agency Comments

We provided DOT with a draft of this report for review and comment. DOT
officials, including FMCSA's Outreach Division Chief and NHTSA's
Behavioral Technology Research Chief, provided oral and written
comments and generally agreed with our recommendations. These FMCSA
and NHTSA officials clarified FMCSA’s role in developing initial plans for
an education and enforcement project after we issued our 2003 report and
before Congress provided NHTSA with Share the Road Safely funding.
FMCSA officials also provided additional information on, and
documentation of, a contract to develop an evaluation of FMCSA’s

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education and outreach programs, including Share the Road Safely
educational initiatives. Finally, the officials provided information on a team
of FMCSA and NHTSA staff established in May 2006 to assist FMCSA with
the expansion of TACT as fiscal responsibility for STRS transitions from
NHTSA to FMCSA. We incorporated this information as well as technical
comments throughout the report as appropriate.

We will send copies of this report to interested congressional committees,
the Secretary of Transportation, and other interested parties. We will also
make copies available to others upon request. In addition, the report will be
available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov.
If you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please contact
me at (202) 512-2834 or siggerudk@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices
of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last
page of this report. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix IV.

Katherine Siggerud
Director, Physical Infrastructure

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GAO-06-916 Truck Safety

Appendix I

Scope And Methodology

AA
ppp
ep
ned
n
x
id
e
x
Iis

To address our first objective and describe what the Department of
Transportation (DOT) has done with the Share the Road Safely (STRS)
program since 2003, we interviewed DOT officials to determine the
changes made in the program since May 2003. Additionally, we interviewed
officials from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA),
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the
Washington State Traffic Safety Commission to report on the
implementation and administration of Washington State’s Ticketing
Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) pilot project. To determine whether the
design of TACT was reasonable, we reviewed TACT programming
documentation to determine if the design of the program links program
initiatives to goals and if the design follows the high-visibility law
enforcement campaign model for behavior change. We did not assess the
design of other STRS initiatives because they were not actively funded in
fiscal years 2004 and 2005, and because we reported on these activities in
our 2003 report.1
To address our second objective—to determine what DOT evaluations have
shown and whether the methods were acceptable—we reviewed
evaluation results and analyzed evaluation plans to determine if short-term,
intermediate, and long-term outcomes were measured and if external
factors were considered and controlled for in the assessment. We reviewed
and summarized the results of the Washington State pilot evaluation and
determined if program initiatives linked to agency goals. In addition, we
reviewed the evaluation results to determine if the evaluation illustrates
that the pilot met its criteria for success. Due to the nature of the TACT
program, we could not determine in this report whether the Share the Road
Safely program achieved reductions in the number of deaths and severity of
injuries as requested by the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient
Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). Specifically,
SAFETEA-LU asked us to update our prior evaluation of STRS to determine
if the program has achieved reductions in the number and severity of
commercial-vehicle crashes, including reductions in the number of deaths
and the severity of injuries sustained in these crashes. NHTSA officials,
however, told us that the evaluation did not assess these long-term results
because the numbers of injuries and fatalities on the pilot’s intervention
corridors were too low to reliably measure any appreciable change.

1

GAO, Truck Safety: Share the Road Safely Program Needs Better Evaluation of Its
Initiatives, GAO-03-680 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 2003).

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Appendix I
Scope And Methodology

Therefore, we did not discuss in this report the program’s impact on
specific numbers of fatalities and injuries.
To assess DOT’s plans for the future of STRS, we interviewed program
administrators at DOT and reviewed relevant budget and planning
documents to determine DOT’s direction for STRS. We interviewed the
FMCSA staff member assigned to transfer knowledge about administering
high-visibility law enforcement campaigns from NHTSA to FMCSA to
assess the staff member’s ability to accomplish this task. We also compared
the design of future FMCSA initiatives with findings we listed in previous
reports on programs designed to modify driver behavior and increase a
program’s effectiveness at reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities
associated with commercial vehicles.
We conducted our review from October 2005 through July 2006 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

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Appendix II

TACT’s Implementation of the Click It or
Ticket Model

Category
Overall

Planning

Publicity

Enforcement

Click It or Ticket criteria

Appendx
Ii

TACT implementation

Data collection, before, during, and immediately after media and enforcement phases.

✔

Earned and paid publicity announcing strict enforcement.

✔

Highly visible enforcement each day of enforcement period.

✔

Analysis of crash locations in determining the need for improvement and for targeting
efforts.

✔

Areas should be defined so that residents have a sense of belonging to a community.

✔

Enforcement agencies should partner with local government, public service
organizations, the media, and businesses to generate overwhelming program
intensity.

✔

Maximum involvement among the state, county, and local enforcement agencies
serving the community.

✔

Areas should try to include as large a percentage of the population as resources
permit.

✔

Up-front commitment to the program is needed from top management in each
participating enforcement agency.

✔

Officer training should be conducted.

✔

A high-level enforcement official should take the lead in carrying the message to the
public.

✔

Organizers must have the full support of elected officials.

✔

The program should be coordinated with the courts, since their caseloads will be
affected directly by the number of citations issued.

✔

Enforcement messages repeated over and over during the publicity period.

✔

Continual use of earned media.

✔

Paid advertisement campaigns.

✔

Radio advertisements timed to run during drive times. Television advertisements are
run at times when most viewers are present.a

X

Enforcement campaigns usually last 2 weeks. During this period, zero-tolerance
enforcement is carried out.b

X

Enforcement visible for entire enforcement period.

✔

Source: GAO analysis of DOT documents.

Legend:
✔= Followed Click It or Ticket criteria
X = Did not follow Click It or Ticket criteria
a

Advertisements coincided with rush-hour, but television advertisement was not used.

b

Warnings were issued to about 28 percent of all violators.

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Appendix III

Description of TACT Methodology for
Analyzing Video Footage of Driver Behavior

Appendx
iI

To determine whether driver behavior changed, TACT administrators
measured the incidence and rates of unsafe driver behavior in the vicinity
of commercial vehicles. Washington State Police troopers collected these
data by videotaping traffic from unmarked cars. Troopers drove behind
commercial vehicles and provided narration indicating the type of behavior
observed each time an unsafe act was seen. Unsafe behaviors included
making unsafe lane changes, cutting in front of a truck, following another
vehicle too closely, engaging in unsafe merging, and speeding. Troopers
also provided narration detailing whether they would issue citations for
driving violations. Later, 99 video clips were randomly selected and shown
to three sets of reviewers consisting of police officers, truck drivers, and
Washington Traffic Safety Commission employees. Reviewers filled out a
score sheet for each video clip indicating how dangerous they believed the
driver behavior was and whether it deserved a citation. Evaluators
quantified these responses to generate a score indicating the seriousness of
the unsafe driving act.

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Appendix IV

Staff Acknowledgments

Appendx
iIV

GAO Contact

Katherine Siggerud, (202) 512-2834, siggerudk@gao.gov

Staff
Acknowledgments

Catherine Colwell, Assistant Director, and Samer Abbas, Analyst-in-Charge,
managed this assignment and made significant contributions to all aspects
of the work. Daniel Concepcion also made significant contributions to all
aspects of this report. In addition, Joel Grossman assisted in our
assessment of the TACT initiative’s design and evaluation. Tamera Dorland
provided writing assistance, Bert Japikse provided legal support, and
Joshua Ormond and Theresa Perkins assisted with graphics.

(542072)

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