Institute for Transportation

There were nearly 100,000 speeding and speeding-related crashes throughout Iowa during the past five years. While 40% of those crashes occurred on municipal streets in urban areas, nearly as many occurred in rural areas that account for 87% of Iowa’s roadway network.

Various roadway characteristics, different driver experiences, and the presence of slow-moving vehicles or pedestrians and other vulnerable road users, make it more challenging to address speeding in certain areas and mean there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

To provide engineering staff with the best-suited solution to fit their needs, a recently concluded Institute for Transportation (InTrans) research project developed a speed management toolbox with 17 different countermeasures that tackle issues at intersections and pedestrian crossings, tangent sections and transition areas, and rural curves.

“The intent was to focus on roadway facilities that are common to Iowa,” said InTrans Director Shauna Hallmark, who was the principal investigator on the project and a nationally recognized expert on speed management, particularly in rural areas. “There’s plenty of speed management toolboxes out there that are focused on urban areas, so we wanted to be sure this project included a focus on suburban and rural facilities as well as urban.”

The modules are all available online and each includes the following sections: considerations for implementation, both crash reduction and speed reduction effectiveness, examples of applications, advantages and disadvantages, and additional resources for the particular countermeasure.

The countermeasures may involve some minor physical changes to the roadway or improved methods of alerting the driver of their speed or both. Recognizing the limited budgets of public works and secondary roads staff, the countermeasures also aim to provide practical and relatively low-cost solutions.

“Iowa is characterized by a much wider range of speed issues, including rural communities, rural roadways, suburban, and high-to-low speed transition areas,” Hallmark said. “A number of studies have been conducted to assess the impact of different countermeasures for these facilities, including in Iowa, but until now, the information has not been summarized in a format that is easily accessed.”

Hallmark added that where studies in Iowa were lacking on a particular countermeasure, the research team sought studies from other regions with similar characteristics as Iowa so the modules are most tailored to Iowa’s unique needs.

“The ultimate benefit of this toolbox is a reduction in speeding related crashes, which account for nearly a third of fatal crashes in Iowa,” Hallmark said. “We also hope this comprehensive toolbox can save Iowa agencies time and money when selecting an appropriate speed management countermeasure.”

The speed management toolbox is available on its InTrans webpage. Hallmark also led an Iowa Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) webinar on the research in November 2025 that can be accessed at its LTAP webinar page. Hallmark has also conducted—and continues to conduct—a number of studies into speed management countermeasures, which can be accessed through her InTrans bio page.