6.3 General Guidance for Safety Analysis Documentation

Proper documentation of safety analysis methodologies, processes, and procedures is critical to ensure that any safety analysis was performed correctly and in accordance with the latest and best practices. The following identifies general guidance when providing documentation for any safety analysis performed:
  • Relate predicted safety performance of the project to existing conditions or observed known safety performance issues of the existing conditions.
  • Consider any factors not included in the quantitative analysis.
  • Explain safety analysis outputs and check that they are reasonable with what is expected.
  • Provide a written summary of the analysis results along with all appropriate tables, graphs, and/or figures to help summarize the results.
  • Provide a brief description of the analysis approach and methodology.
  • All assumptions used to perform the analysis and resulting decisions made are recommended to be documented in the analysis summary.
  • Document the source of all data used in the analysis and provide a copy of all analysis data in an appendix.
  • Include the input and output files from any tool used to assist in the safety analysis (both in native and PDF formats).
  • Provide a copy of any historical crash data used in the analysis and include native electronic file; excel spreadsheet, text file, etc.
  • Include a PDF summary of any CMF used from the CMF Clearinghouse website.
  • Crash data is recommended to include raw data with appropriate attributes including, but not limited to, highway name/number, crash year, location (latitude, longitude, Distance-from-Origin (DFO), mile point), severity, manner of collision, etc.
  • Location-based analysis may include a Google Earth KMZ file with applicable data (horizontal alignment with stationing, proposed geometric design, Area of Influence with DFO, etc.), if available.
  • Input data is recommended to correspond with design plans (horizontal and vertical alignment, stationing, etc.).
  • Explain why the proposed design is the right engineering solution for the project.