Welcome To The Best Highway Safety Practices Institute New Website!
The Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides professionals, policy makers, the press and the public with empirical data, findings, guidance, recommended practices and resources to advance best practices and fair laws. The Institute was founded in 2004, in Portland, Oregon by professionals who specialize in highway safety issues. The Institute focuses on education, research, best practices and their application, and assuring public policy is founded in best practices to achieve roadway safety and that the exercise of police powers thereof is Constitutional. We can make our roads safer, return to fair laws and reduce our carbon footprint, too.
Best Practice is defined by those practices that have been verified by field research and are peer reviewed before adoption.
In 1966, Congress passed The Highway Safety Act of 1966 which began a process to require that all traffic control devices on public roadways in the nation be based on sound engineering principles, practices and have a uniform basis in–fact determination, appearance, expectation and application on all roads open to public travel regardless of state lines, jurisdiction type or classification.
These mandates are found in Title 23, United States Code, Section 109(d) and Title 23, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 655.601 through 655.603. In this Act‘s remedy, Congress specifically preempted all state laws to facilitate the adoption of a UNIFORM national traffic control standard – The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).
Congress’ goal was to return safety decisions to those that base their decisions only on findings–of–fact that have been proven to make us safer, with a uniform continuity of appearance, meaning and expectation. In 1988 Congress expanded the FHWA domain over construction of the nation’s highways to include all traffic control on them. One Nation, One Standard, One Look, One Expectation Based on Fact!
In this Act, Congress entrusted this responsibility solely to licensed traffic engineering professionals and their institutions, because the tenets of their profession require studies to test a hypothesis, then peer review and verification before a standard, practice, procedure or principle can be incorporated into its engineering body of working knowledge.
You can make that difference and even one informed person can achieve dramatic positive results. Our unsafe roads are a matter of choice, and in this case the Highway Safety Act of 1966 was the right choice. Let’s return to it for guidance. The law is behind us and therein lies the tools to accomplish this goal! We need your help!
Get involved: Pick a topic or subject that you are concerned about, including tax deductible donations, and let "We the People" strive to make our roads safer. Knowledge is power, when applied, and we have the inalienable right to use it!