Researchers
About the research
High-visibility enforcement (HVE) promotes voluntary compliance with traffic safety laws through a combined approach using enforcement strategies (e.g., enhanced patrols), visibility elements (e.g., specially marked squad cars, electronic message boards), and public outreach. While HVE campaigns, which may target one or multiple traffic safety issues, have proven to be effective in general, it can be difficult to determine the impact of a campaign on a particular behavior. As a result, additional information is needed to assist agencies in evaluating the effectiveness of HVE campaigns. This includes methods that agencies can use despite resource and technical expertise constraints.
The goal of this project was to develop evaluation frameworks and methodologies to assist agencies in evaluating the effectiveness of HVE campaigns. The focus was to determine methods that can be used for combined HVE campaigns, but the tools developed can be used for single-theme HVE campaigns as well.
As part of the project, four frameworks were developed for two distinct audiences. Two frameworks were developed for law enforcement, or other interested agencies, that may have little background in statistics and few additional resources. This includes frameworks for data visualization and simple before-and-after statistics. Two frameworks were developed for use by agencies that have the necessary in-house skills—or the resources to use outside consultants—to develop more robust analyses capable of identifying the factors that contribute to campaign effectiveness. This included one framework outlining classical statistical methods and another that described the use of spatial/temporal models.