The mission of Kentucky’s Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) is to help people reach their transportation destinations safely through a data-informed, strategic approach to improving highway safety.

A trusted partner in this mission, PRIME AE has supported KYTC’s safety improvement efforts for the past eight years on five consecutive HSIP contracts. Our assignments range from individual corridor and intersection projects to systemic, district-wide safety improvements. Traditional (reactive) projects pinpoint high-crash locations and develop safety improvements unique to those locations. Systemic projects identify characteristics that correlate to an increased risk of crashes and develop safety improvements to address locations that share these characteristics, whether or not they have a demonstrated crash history.

When a project is assigned, the PRIME AE team gathers information from sources like crash data, geometric characteristics, and traffic characteristics to develop potential improvements. For each proposed improvement, the safety benefit based on the potential reduction in crashes is calculated and compared to the cost of the proposed improvement – including construction, right of way, and utility costs. This data-driven approach allows the team to prioritize the most impactful improvements. Following construction, crash data for each project is analyzed and compared to pre-construction crashes to determine how effective the improvements were and to inform future projects.

This meticulous, data-driven method provides impactful solutions to ensuring the safety of Kentucky’s roadways and the people that use them.