On July 6, President Obama signed a new surface transportation bill in a ceremony at the White House attended by transportation leaders, including GHSA's Executive Director. The new law, known as Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) reforms transportation programs and authorizes funding for two fiscal years, FY 2013 and 2014.

The new law provides a slight funding increase for behavioral highway safety programs administered by GHSA members and combines current grant programs into two programs: the Section 402 State and Community Highway Safety grant program and the Section 405 National Priority Safety Program. The 402 program is authorized at $235 million in both FY 2013 and 2014. The 405 program is authorized at $265 million in FY 2013 and $272 million in FY 2014.

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GHSA's Annual Meeting, August 26-26 in Baltimore, will explore highway safety from the public health perspective, focusing on how to apply successes in public health to highway safety. Other topics include how highway safety professionals can work more closely with the public health community and how highway safety can become a top priority in that community.

Monday's keynote session features U.S. Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari. As Deputy Secretary, Porcari is the Department of Transportation's chief operating officer, with responsibility for day-to-day operations of the 10 modal administrations and the work of more than 55,000 DOT employees nationwide and overseas. 

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The Fourth Edition of the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC) Guideline was announced on July 2. It can be found online at www.mmucc.us. Updated, online MMUCC training will become available at that website in August.

MMUCC is a voluntary guideline of data elements and their attributes that states are encouraged to collect at the scene of a crash. The guideline was first developed in 1998 and has been updated two times prior to this new version. All states collect a large percentage of the data recommended in the guideline, and most states continue to revise their Police Accident Report (PAR) forms so that they are consistent with the MMUCC recommendations.