OMB Supporting Statement_PartASIReporting2019 (002)

Inventory of State Compliance on Serious Injury Reporting Using the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria 4^th Edition

The Supporting Statement: Part A

This is a request for OMB clearance for a new information collection entitled “Inventory of State Compliance on Serious Injury Reporting.”

1. Circumstances that make collection of information necessary:

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Safety’s mission is to exercise leadership throughout the highway community to make the Nation’s roadways safer by developing, evaluating, and deploying life-saving countermeasures; advancing the use of scientific methods and data-driven decisions, fostering a safety culture, and promoting an integrated, multidisciplinary 4 E’s (Engineering, Education, Enforcement, Education) approach to safety. The mission is carried out through the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), a data driven strategic approach to improving highway safety on all public roads that focuses on performance. The goal of the program is to achieve a significant reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads. This collection supports DOT’s strategic goal for safety.

In keeping with that mission, the United States Congress on June 29, 2012 passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), which was signed into law (P.L. 112-141) on July 6, 2012 by President Barrack Obama and continued in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) . MAP-21 is a milestone for the U.S. economy and the Nation’s surface transportation program as it transformed the policy and programmatic framework for investments to guide the system’s growth and development and created a streamlined performance-based surface transportation program. FHWA defines Transportation Performance Management as a strategic approach that uses system information to make investment and policy decisions to achieve national performance goals.

On April 15, 2016, the Safety Performance Measures (Safety PM) Final Rule established a new regulation to implement MAP-21 Performance Management Requirements at 23 CFR 490 and included specific requirements related to safety performance management in Subpart B of the regulation. States must establish safety performance measures to assess serious injuries and fatalities per vehicle mile traveled; the number of serious injuries and fatalities; and the number of non-motorized serious injuries and fatalities for the purposes of carrying out the HSIP under 23 U.S.C. 148. The FHWA’s Safety PM Final Rule and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Interim Final Rule (23 CFR Part 1300) Uniform Procedure for State Highway Safety Grant Programs requires all States to use the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC) 4^th Edition by April 15, 2019 for reporting serious injuries to the USDOT.

In defining performance measures for serious injuries, the requirement will provide for a uniform definition for national reporting in this performance area, as required by MAP-21 and the FAST Act. An established standard for defining serious injuries as a result of highway crashes has been developed in the MMUCC 4^th Edition. MMUCC represents a collaborative effort to generate uniform crash data that are accurate, reliable and credible for data-driven highway safety decisions within a State, between States, and at the national level. The MMUCC defines a serious injuries resulting from traffic crashes as “Suspected Serious Injury (A)” whose attributes are:

Any injury, other than fatal, which results in one or more of the following: severe laceration resulting in exposure of underlying tissues, muscle, organs, or resulting in significant loss of blood; broken or distorted extremity (arm or leg); crush injuries; suspected skull, chest, or abdominal injury other than bruises or minor lacerations; significant burns (second and third degree burns over 10 percent or more of the body); unconsciousness when taken from the crash scene; or paralysis.¹

FHWA and NHTSA are working with States to bring them into compliance with the reporting requirement by April 15, 2019. As a way to measure compliance on the reporting levels for serious injuries, FHWA seeks to determine if States have adopted the MMUCC 4^th Edition definition, attribute and coding convention by the required date. A State is considered compliant with the serious injury definition requirement if it:

(a) Maintains a statewide crash database capable of accurately aggregating the MMUCC 4th Edition injury status attribute for “Suspected Serious Injury (A)”;

(b) Ensures the State crash database, data dictionary and crash report user manual employs the verbatim terminology and definitions for the MMUCC 4th Edition injury status attribute “Suspected Serious Injury (A)”;

(c) Ensures the police crash form employs the verbatim MMUCC 4th Edition injury status attribute for “Suspected Serious Injury (A)” ; and

(d) Ensures that the seven serious injury types specified in the “Suspected Serious Injury (A)” attribute are not included in any of the other attributes listed in the States’ injury status data elements.

The ultimate outcome for the project is to assess the extent to which State, county, and municipal law enforcement agencies are assessing and reporting highway crash injury levels by using the definition, attribute, and coding convention for “Suspected Serious Injury (A)” based in the MMUCC guidelines and, if not, the definition and coding convention the jurisdictions are using.

2. How, by whom, and for what purpose is the information used:

The information will be collected by FHWA by conducting in person or telephone interviews with the State Traffic Records (TR) Coordinators for each State, the State crash database and/or form managers, State Law Enforcement Agency or the best State resource person who can provide the necessary information about the State crash database, police crash report user manual, data dictionary, and police crash report form used in the State. Follow-up interviews with county, city, or municipal agencies may need to be completed to obtain information on non-State crash reports as necessary.

The information will be directly collected by an FHWA contractor.

The information will be used to measure compliance with FHWA and NHTSA program requirements per 23 CFR 490 and CFR Part 1300 for reporting serious injuries in support of the National Goal to “Reduce fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads.”

The purpose of the information collection is to conduct an assessment of each State crash database, data dictionary, police crash report user manual and crash report form to determine if the definition and coding convention used for reporting on serious injuries is compliant with the MMUCC 4^th Edition. If States are not compliant, identify the definition and coding convention that is used. After the State’s information is collected, the State safety stakeholders not in compliance with the regulation will be contacted to determine their reporting procedures and plan for meeting compliance requirements.

A3. Extent of automated information collection:

Automation will not be used to collect this information. Each State will be contacted individually, starting with the State TR coordinator and then, if necessary, identify the alternate person/s that can best provide the information desired. All contacts will be made by telephone or, where possible, in person.

4. Efforts to identify duplication:

The information collected through this survey will not duplicate existing data.

4. Efforts to minimize the burden on small businesses:

This information collection will only focus on Federal, State, and local government agencies (Departments of Transportation, State Highway Safety Offices, Traffic Records Coordinators, Departments of Motor Vehicles, State Law Enforcement Agencies, etc.). Therefore, there is no burden on small businesses.

4. Impact of less frequent collection of information:

The information will be collected once. Thus, there is no impact of collecting information less frequently.

4. Special circumstances:

There are no special circumstances related to this information collection.

4. Compliance with 5 CFR 1320.8:

The FHWA’s Safety PM Final Rule, which was published to the Federal Register on March 15, 2016, allows States 36 months to become compliant with the serious injury reporting requirement. Therefore, by April 15, 2019, States must report “Suspected Serious Injury (A)” as defined in the MMUCC 4^th Edition guideline.

4. Payments or gifts to respondents:

There will be no payments or gifts to the respondents.

4. Assurance of confidentiality:

The information being collected is not inherently confidential. The survey will collect facts about how serious injuries resulting from roadway crashes are defined and reported within each State. No opinions, other subjective responses or personally identifiable information will be sought or required. The name, business title and address of the respondent will be collected.

4. Justification for collection of sensitive information:

The information to be collected will not be sensitive in nature.

4. Estimate of burden hours for information requested:

The total burden for this information collection is approximately 37.5 hours. Information will be collected from the staff member responsible for managing State and locally reported crash data and is limited to information focused specifically on serious injuries. No other parts of the State crash database, police crash report user manual or crash report form will be evaluated. The respondents will include each Federal State, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and, as necessary, local level jurisdictions. In certain states, multiple people may be responsible for crash reporting and data collection, while in others, a single person may responsible for this information. An estimated 75 persons will be contacted, based on current knowledge of State traffic records coordinators, other persons responsible for crash data, and other persons at the local level for jurisdictions that do not utilize the State police crash report form. It is estimated that the interview will take approximately 30 minutes to complete. Assuming a mean hourly wage of $24.27², the total estimated cost for the burden hours of this information collection is $910.13

75 respondents x 30 minute response time = 37.5 hours

4. Estimate of total annual costs to respondents:

There will be no costs to the respondents.

4. Estimate of cost to the Federal government:

The cost to the Federal government for this project is $100,000, of which this information collection represents approximately 10%. Therefore, the estimated cost to the Federal government for this information collection is approximately $10,000.

4. Explanation of program changes or adjustments:

This is a new information collection. There are no program changes or adjustments.

4. Publication of results of data collection:

The raw data collected will not be published. A report for internal use, summarizing all findings from the information collection, will be used by FHWA for the purposes described in Question A2.

4. Approval for not displaying the expiration date of OMB approval:

Approval for not displaying the expiration date is not being requested.

4. Exceptions to certification statement:

No exceptions to the certification statement are being requested.

1 MMUCC Guideline: Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria, Fourth Edition (2012). http://mmucc.us/sites/default/files/MMUCC_4th_Ed.pdf

2 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_999200.htm#00-0000

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