Publications

Eby, D.W., Vivoda, J.M., Miller, L.L., Spradlin, H. 2003. A Functional Evaluation of the Assessing Community Traffic Safety (ACTS) Tool.
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This report presents the results of a functional evaluation of the ACTS tool. The tool is based on the concept that a community can assess its own traffic safety problems and resources and discover recommended programs using a single software tool combined with an active community coalition. In our evaluation of the ACTS components, we found that the software interface was acceptable, and we provided several suggestions for its improvement. We found the logic underlying ACTS to be reasonable. However, the functional implementation of this logic may mislead some communities regarding their assets and deficits. The survey data may not come from appropriate respondents and the coding of certain responses appeared to be inappropriate. We provide several suggestions for improving the community surveys. While the computation of scores based upon crash data is accurate and appropriate, the data used in the calculation are quite outdated, are not community specific, and only consider KA-level injuries. There seems to be a good balance between assets and deficits; that is, the listed assets are appropriate for the deficits. We suggest, however, other deficits that could be included. ACTS has some problems with the linkages between deficits, assets, and recommended programs. In many cases, we found that these links between programs and deficits were not appropriate. In other cases, the linked program did not match with the asset. Additionally, we found that there were biases and potential biases in ACTS. Primarily, these biases were most likely the result of errors in either coding of responses or computations. We conclude that the concept of ACTS could be extremely useful for communities interested in improving traffic safety and recommend that ACTS be extensively revised and further supported.