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The Safe System Approach (SSA) is a comprehensive framework that emphasizes shared responsibility, proactive design to accommodate human error, and the management of kinetic energy to prevent serious injuries and fatalities among roadway users. The SSA offers the potential for broader safety impacts than siloed or isolated safety efforts.

NCHRP Research Report 1181: Toolkit for Institutionalizing the Safe System Approach, presents 30 tools designed to support the broader institutionalization of the SSA. These tools assist transportation agencies in assessing, refining, and aligning their systems, funding strategies, decision-making processes, and project delivery practices with Safe System principles. The report provides practical, proven, and emerging strategies to support meaningful implementation across departments and levels of government. It also serves as a valuable companion to existing SSA guidance by offering hands-on tools and real-world examples that help address common institutional challenges and support sustained safety outcomes within a transformed safety culture.

The project that developed NCHRP Research Report 1181 also produced NCHRP Web-Only Document 451: Developing a Toolkit to Institutionalize the Safe System Approach, which documents the research effort underlying the development of the report.

Transportation agencies have used performance-based management (PBM) for decades to guide strategic decision-making. PBM uses performance data to improve project and program delivery, align decisions with agency priorities, and increase transparency and accountability. Within a PBM framework, strategic objectives are tied to planning, programming, and performance monitoring to ensure investments support agency goals and performance targets. While generalized PBM frameworks apply to maintenance activities, the primary focus of most PBM-based transportation research has been on investing capital funding effectively.

NCHRP Research Report 1188: Performance-Based Management Approaches for Maintenance: A Guide, produced by TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, is designed to help practitioners implement or strengthen maintenance practices that incorporate PBM strategies. The report, along with its accompanying online tools, provides highway maintenance leaders at agencies of all levels of PBM maturity with the information needed to strengthen existing or establish new performance-based maintenance programs.