People, vehicles and roadways are all part of the Highway Transportation System (HTS), a complex system designed to move people and things safely and efficiently from one place to another.



The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety act requires vehicle manufacturers to include certain safety features like safety belts or shatterproof glass in their vehicles.

The National Highway safety act provides guidelines that states must follow. These guidelines set minimum standards for driver licensing, vehicle registration, highway construction, highway maintenance, traffic laws, and traffic court. This federal law gives each state the authority to set its own laws, such as Graduated Driver Licensing laws, so long as they do not conflict with federal rules and standards. Counties, cities, and towns also pass traffic laws, such as establishing school zones and speed limits on city streets, to make those streets safer for citizens.

Early roads in America were based on trade routes and exploration routes. Increased population, vehicle speed, and roadway usage now require that a corps of engineers be involved in the planning, grading, banking, paving, curving, and bridging of new roads. Local roads are given names that often reflect the history and culture of the town. State and federal highways are given numbers that follow conventional rules. Roads traveling North and South have odd numbers with the number sequence increasing as you travel West to East. Roads traveling East and West have even numbers with the highest number farthest North.

Innovations in highway design are making modern roadways safer than ever. Today’s high speed roadways separate traffic moving in opposite directions with a wide median-a concrete or grassy structure in between the lanes. It is not uncommon for newly constructed highways to include rumble strips along the outer boundary of the lane. These ridges in the pavement will cause tires to make a loud “rumbling” noise and cause the whole vehicle to vibrate if the driver drifts to the edge of the road. Reflective paints and nodes are now used to separate lanes of traffic because they are easy to see both at day and night. Highways and interstates will, by design, have a shoulder, a strip of land along the roadway that may be paved, gravel or dirt. Shoulders should be engineered to support the weight of an automobile, leaving a place for drivers to stop in an emergency. They are not, however, designed to support extensive driving. Other safety features one may encounter on highways may include guard rails, street lights, and electronic notification signs. These features, as well as vehicle safety technologies, are in place to protect drivers from the dangers inherent in driving; however, the number one cause of collisions is driver error.

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