Several indicators suggest that the number of traffic fatalities is likely to increase in the United States. While motor vehicle crashes have multiple contributing factors, the approach that can have the highest impact in improving traffic safety is the one that focuses on the driver; as the driver behavior is the largest source of causal factors related to crashes. Highway patrol agencies enforce traffic laws in an attempt to catch violators who put their own safety and that of others at risk. Their ultimate goal is to make a positive change in undesirable driver behaviors. As such, highway patrol agencies play a critical role in improving traffic safety. Given this, the purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive set of measures that could be used by highway patrol agencies to measure and improve their organizational performance. A case study was conducted, studying the current performance measures that are in use in the Wyoming Highway Patrol (WHP) to identify ways to improve those. This study scrutinized WHP’s performance measures to propose new and more effective performance measures considering two main characteristics of patrol operations in enforcing traffic laws: activity and visibility. The proposed performance measures have the potential to increase the organizational performance of WHP, enabling WHP to better meet its goals as an agency. The reasoning behind each proposed performance measure, specifically the concept of “meaningful activity” as proposed in this paper, could be beneficial for developing national performance measures for highway patrol agencies to ultimately establish a consistent framework at the national level. (Author/publisher)
Abstract