The Utah Highway Safety program has the purpose of proposing, negotiating and managing the state's contract with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for federal funds to be expended on highway safety projects within the state. The Utah Highway Safety program acts to subcontract with state, local, and private organizations in Utah to expend resources to implement highway safety activities.
During the 2015 General Session, the Legislature appropriated for Fiscal Year 2016, $6,746,500 from all sources for Highway Safety. This is a 26.5 percent increase from Fiscal Year 2015 revised estimated amounts from all sources. The total includes $56,500 from the General/Education Funds, an increase of 1.4 percent from revised Fiscal Year 2015 estimates.
The primary objective of the Utah Highway Safety program is to "to develop, promote and coordinate traffic safety initiatives designed to reduce traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities on Utah's roadways." Included below are metrics that indicate relevant outicomes related to this purpose. Measures inlcude observed seatbelt usage, motor vehicle crash fatalities, and off-premise retailer compliance rate.
![Highway Safety](media/hwysafety.jpg)
The activities associated with the subcontracting process are project development, technical assistance, consultation, liaison, evaluation, reporting, accounting, data collection, problem identification, resource analysis, project monitoring, and subcontract negotiations. The program also contracts for special projects, negotiates with subcontractors for expenditure of these funds, and manages the implementation and progress of these projects.
The Utah Highway Safety program coordinates the highway safety efforts within the state and maintains communications with all involved agencies and individuals. These include entities such as the Board of Education, Department of Transportation, Health Department, State Planning Office, State Court Administrator, Department of Public Safety, local police departments and sheriffs, the National Safety Council, PTA, and news media. Since the Utah Highway Safety program is a state agency, it responds to requests for information from other agencies and from private citizens.
COBI contains unaudited data as presented to the Legislature by state agencies at the time of publication. For audited financial data see the State of Utah's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports.