PM1 - Safety
Updated Using 2023 Data

The first of the performance measures rules (PM1) issued by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) establishes five measures to assess the safety condition of Florida’s public roadways:

  1. Number of Fatalities: The total number of persons suffering fatal injuries in a motor vehicle crash during a calendar year.
  2. Rate of Fatalities: The total number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in a calendar year.
  3. Number of Serious Injuries: The total number of persons suffering at least one serious injury in a motor vehicle crash during a calendar year.
  4. Rate of Serious Injuries: The total number of serious injuries per 100 million VMT in a calendar year.
  5. Number of Non-motorized Fatalities and Non-motorized Serious Injuries: The combined total number of non-motorized fatalities and non-motorized serious. injuries involving a motor vehicle during a calendar year.

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and Florida’s traffic safety partners are committed to eliminating fatalities and serious injuries, with the understanding that the death or serious injury of any person is unacceptable. Therefore, FDOT has established zero as the only acceptable target for all five of the federal safety performance measures. FDOT reaffirms this commitment each year in setting annual safety targets. Some MPOs have established their own targets for the safety measures.

Methodology

Methodology: PM1 - Safety

Details of the first performance rule (PM1) are available here.

This section provides the computation equations for the five safety performance measures. Please note that annual fatality metrics are a whole number while the rate metrics and calculated measures are rounded to the nearest decimal place, as indicated in each of the equations.

Calculation

Number of Fatalities

`"Number of Fatalities Measure"_"py" = ({"Fatalities"_"py-4" + "Fatalities"_"py-3" + "Fatalities"_"py-2" + "Fatalities"_"py-1" + "Fatalities"_"py"})/"5"`

Where,

Number of Fatalities MeasurepyCalculated fatality measure for the Performance Year, PY (rounded to the nearest tenth decimal place)
FatalitiespyAnnual number of fatalities metric (whole number)
pyPerformance year
py – xx year(s) before the performance year

Rate of Fatalities

`"Rate of Fatalities Measure"_"py" = ({("Fatalities"_"py-4")/("Total VMT"_"py-4") + ("Fatalities"_"py-3")/("Total VMT"_"py-3") + ("Fatalities"_"py-2")/("Total VMT"_"py-2") + ("Fatalities"_"py-1")/("Total VMT"_"py-1") + ("Fatalities"_"py")/("Total VMT"_"py")})/"5"`

Where,

Rate of Fatalities MeasurepyCalculated fatality rate measure for the PY (rounded to the nearest thousandth decimal place)
FatalitiespyAnnual number of fatalities metric (whole number)
Total VMTpyAnnual VMT per 100 million metric (calculated per 100 million and rounded to the nearest hundredth decimal place)
`"Fatalities"_"py"/"Total VMT"_"py"`Annual fatality rate metric (rounded to the nearest hundredth decimal place)
pyPerformance year
py – xx year(s) before the performance year

Number of Serious Injuries

`"Number of Serious Injuries Measure"_"py" =` `({"Serious Injuries"_"py-4" + "Serious Injuries"_"py-3" + "Serious Injuries"_"py-2" + "Serious Injuries"_"py-1" + "Serious Injuries"_"py"})/"5"`

Where,

Number of Serious Injuries MeasurepyCalculated serious injury measure for the PY (rounded to the nearest tenth decimal place)
Serious InjuriespyAnnual number of serious injuries metric (whole number)
pyPerformance year
py – xx year(s) before the performance year

Rate of Serious Injuries

`"Rate of Serious Injuries Measure"_"py" =` `({("Serious Injuries"_"py-4")/("Total VMT"_"py-4") + ("Serious Injuries"_"py-3")/("Total VMT"_"py-3") + ("Serious Injuries"_"py-2")/("Total VMT"_"py-2") + ("Serious Injuries"_"py-1")/("Total VMT"_"py-1") + ("Serious Injuries"_"py")/("Total VMT"_"py")})/"5"`

Where,

Serious InjuriespyAnnual number of serious injury metric (whole number)
Total VMTpyAnnual VMT (per 100 million) metric (calculated per 100 million and rounded to the nearest hundredth decimal place)
`"Serious Injuries"_"py"/"Total VMT"_"py"`Annual serious injury rate metric (rounded to the nearest hundredth decimal place)
pyPerformance year
py – xx year(s) before the performance year

Number of Non-motorized Fatalities and Serious Injuries

`"Number of Non-Motorized Measure"_"py" =` `({"Non-Motorized"_"py-4" + "Non-Motorized"_"py-3" + "Non-Motorized"_"py-2" + "Non-Motorized"_"py-1" + "Non-Motorized"_"py"})/"5"`

Where,

Number of Non-Motorized MeasurepyCalculated number of non-motorized fatalities and number of serious injury measure for the PY (rounded to the nearest tenth decimal place)
Non-MotorizedpyCombined annual number of non-motorized fatalities and non-motorized serious injuries metric (whole number)
pyPerformance year
py – xx year(s) before the performance year
Definitions

Definitions: PM1 - Safety

  • Number of Fatalities: The total number of persons suffering fatal injuries in a motor vehicle traffic crash during a calendar year, based on data reported in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database.
  • Rate of Fatalities: The ratio of the number of fatalities to the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) (expressed in 100 million VMT) in a calendar year, based on the data reported by the FARS database.
  • Number of Serious Injuries: The total number of persons suffering at least one serious injury for each separate motor vehicle traffic crash during a calendar year where the crash involves a motor vehicle traveling on a public road.
  • Rate of Serious Injuries: The ratio of the total number of serious injuries to the number of VMT (expressed in 100 million VMT) in a calendar year.
  • Number of Non-Motorized Fatalities and Serious Injuries: The total number of fatalities with the FARS person attribute codes: (5) Pedestrian, (6) Bicyclist, (7) Other Cyclist, (8) Person on Personal Conveyances and the total number of serious injuries where the injured person is, or equivalent to, a pedestrian (2.2.36) or a pedalcyclist (2.2.39) as defined in the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) D16.1-2007.
Download Data

For information on state safety measures, please click here.

Date of last refresh: 08/30/2024

SOURCES

Fatality and serious injury counts from Signal Four Analytics (S4) database as of March 1, 2024: any figures that include the 2023 data are preliminary at this time and may change with future updates;
Traffic volumes as published by the FDOT office of Transportation Data and Analytics