Highway safety is the shared responsibility of federal, state, and local levels of government. Each branch is organized and positioned to make substantial, unique contributions to the entire effort. The SMS approach helps leverage funding and other resources for the best results across the state.
Multidisciplinary safety management procedures such as those used by the Iowa SMS insure that comprehensive program development and delivery attains the goals of saving lives, reducing injuries, and putting public funds to their best possible use.
Input from professionals and ordinary citizens is critical to insuring that the highway safety needs of Iowans are met with the best and most appropriate solutions. SMS maintains a membership of "Engineering, Enforcement, Education, Emergency Response & Â…Everyone else " and actively seeks input from Iowans, local traffic safety entities and other constituencies for improving Iowa's highway safety.
While SMS can play a key role in a number of initiatives, there is no intent for SMS to manage or control initiatives in Iowa's transportation safety community.
SMS can serve as a catalyst or source of "synergy" that helps coordinate and maximize transportation safety efforts statewide.
SMS is not intended to sustain existing programs or provide ongoing funding for new programs.
Cost effectiveness is critical to the success of this enterprise, and should be clearly established in the demonstration or pilot phases of the various emphasis areas. With credible documentation and history to demonstrate cost effectiveness, budget requests to fund the various strategies will be more realistic, more likely to succeed, and result in better public policy.
