Highway Safety Grant Program Achieves Limited Success

Gao ID: CED-81-16 October 15, 1980

In 13 years, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has spent nearly $1.3 billion in Federal grant funds to help carry out State highway safety programs designed to reduce traffic accidents, deaths, injuries, and property damage.

GAO found that the Highway Safety Grant Program has addressed a multitude of safety activities that may not have been the most effective, because of the changing, and sometimes conflicting, directions from legislation, DOT, and the States. This situation is further complicated because few highway safety projects have yet been shown to have a positive or lasting effect on accident reductions. Conversely, many measures that are believed to contribute significantly to highway safety have not been implemented, or have been implemented incompletely, inefficiently, or only temporarily by the States.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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