Use of Multicriteria Decision Making To Identify the Critical Highway Safety Needs of Special Population Groups

With the recognition of the importance of addressing special-population groups’ safety needs, with the aim of increasing highway safety in the United States, the requirement arises to identify the critical issues. A multicriteria decision-making approach was used to identify the most critical highway safety needs of six special population groups: older drivers, young drivers, school-age children, international tourists, new immigrants, and people with disabilities. Two surveys were conducted in which the opinions of highway safety professionals were sought for identifying the most critical groups, and an index was developed on corresponding critical highway safety issues and concerns. The index corresponds to a score representing a multidimensional situation and estimates the weighted sum of all the six criteria considered. The six criteria considered were the impact on crash rates, the effectiveness of applying roadway design changes to address the issue, the effectiveness of applying policy changes to address the issue, the cost of implementing the change, the ease of implementing the change, and the priority to address the issue. Three different methods were used in assigning the weights for the six criteria, and ranking orders were compared for the reliability of the outcome. It was found that the ranking orders were almost consistent irrespective of the method used to determine the weights.