The Roadway Safety Modernization Act of 2025 amends multiple provisions of title 23, U.S. Code to permit Federal-aid highway and freight safety programs to fund the development, acquisition, and deployment of safety data systems—explicitly naming predictive analytics, telematics, and other "validated methodology" tools. It also adds measures encouraging states to integrate those tools into safety planning and performance-based programs.
The bill matters because it converts long-standing policy interest in data-driven safety into statutory authority for grant spending, creates a one-year DOT guidance requirement on privacy and validation, and tasks DOT with coordinating interoperable use of predictive safety tools across agencies. That combination will change procurement, analytics, and data-governance practices at state DOTs, metropolitan planning organizations, and freight operators if implemented.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill authorizes recipients of certain Federal-aid highway and freight grants to use funds for safety data systems, including predictive analytics and telematics, and amends statutory program descriptions to include those tools for risk modeling and planning. It also mandates DOT guidance within one year on anonymization, transparency, and validation, and requires interagency coordination on interoperability and standards.
Who It Affects
Primary actors are state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, freight carriers and terminals, Federal Highway Administration programs, and vendors supplying telematics and analytics platforms. Secondary actors include NHTSA, FMCSA, FRA, and state safety offices that run crash-reduction programs and performance-based planning under sections 134/135.
Why It Matters
By explicitly making analytics and telematics an eligible grant expense and requiring guidance and coordination, the bill incentivizes large-scale deployment of data-driven safety tools and pushes federal-state alignment on standards and privacy practices—shifting how highway safety projects are selected, evaluated, and funded.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill inserts predictive analytics, telematics, and similar validated tools into the statutory language governing highway safety and freight programs so grantees can use Federal-aid dollars to buy, develop, or deploy them. For the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) it expands eligible activities and the types of safety data that must be considered for risk modeling and planning; for the National Highway Freight Program (NHFP) it adds comparable language and asks the Administrator to assess whether operating standards are needed for intelligent freight systems, with a one-year deadline to decide and report.
Beyond eligibility changes, the bill strengthens the role of data in evaluating safety projects: it requires states to use crash data alongside predictive tools to evaluate project effectiveness and to assess comparative benefits of different countermeasures. It also amends the statutory priorities in the National Priority Safety Programs to encourage states to deploy predictive analytics and telematics to identify high-risk segments and inform performance-based planning under sections 134 and 135.To manage risks around use of these technologies, the Secretary of Transportation must issue guidance within one year addressing anonymization, securing safety data, protecting personally identifiable information, transparency and accountability in analytics use, and grounding tools in validated methodologies (the bill cites actuarial validation and behavioral risk analysis as examples).
Finally, DOT must coordinate activities across FHWA, NHTSA, FMCSA, FRA, OST-R, and the ITS Joint Program Office, and consult other agencies (Commerce, Energy, and others as appropriate) to promote interoperability and effective federal program alignment.
The Five Things You Need to Know
DOT must publish guidance on anonymization, data security, transparency, and validation within 1 year of enactment.
The NHFP provision directs the Administrator to determine within 1 year whether operating standards for intelligent freight transportation systems are needed and to report to Congress if they are.
The bill defines "intelligent freight transportation system" to include elevated freight facilities in proximity to Federal-aid highways, land-port connectors, communications or information-processing systems, and dedicated intelligent freight lanes.
HSIP is amended to explicitly permit grant funds for the "development, acquisition, or deployment" of safety data systems, including predictive analytics and telematics, and to require states to incorporate such data into risk modeling and project evaluation.
Guidance must require that safety technologies be grounded in "validated methodologies," naming actuarial validation and behavioral risk analysis as illustrative approaches, while also directing practices for PII protection and transparency.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Provides the Act's name: "Roadway Safety Modernization Act of 2025." This is a formality but signals congressional intent to treat the bill as a targeted modernization of safety tools and programs.
Make predictive safety tools eligible HSIP activities and expand data considerations
The bill amends multiple subparts of 23 U.S.C. 148 to (1) add eligibility for development, acquisition, or deployment of safety data systems (explicitly including predictive analytics and telematics), (2) require consideration of data collected via those tools for railway-highway crossing analyses and risk modeling, and (3) require states to use crash data plus predictive tools to evaluate project effectiveness and compare countermeasure benefits. Practically, this converts an often-discussed best practice into an explicit allowable use of HSIP dollars and embeds analytics into how states are expected to measure project outcomes.
Add safety data tools to NHFP and require standards assessment for intelligent freight systems
Section 167 gains language authorizing development and deployment of safety data tools to improve freight safety and performance-based planning. It also creates a one-year deadline for the Administrator to determine whether operating standards are needed for "intelligent freight transportation systems" and to report to Congress if so. The bill further inserts a statutory definition for intelligent freight systems, which includes elevated facilities, land-port connectors, communications/information-processing systems, and dedicated intelligent freight lanes—expanding the universe of freight infrastructure and technology eligible for federal attention.
Encourage states to integrate predictive analytics into priority safety programs
The bill modifies the priorities and allowable activities under Section 405 to explicitly encourage states to integrate predictive analytics, telematics, and validated methodology tools into state safety data systems. It also directs deployment of these tools for identifying high-risk segments and informing performance-based planning. That change nudges states that accept priority-safety grants to make analytics part of their core safety workflows.
DOT guidance on privacy, validation, and interoperability plus interagency coordination
Within one year DOT must issue best-practice guidance covering anonymization, PII protection, transparency/accountability in analytics use, and approaches to validation. Separately, DOT is required to coordinate related activities across FHWA, NHTSA, FMCSA, FRA, OST‑R and the ITS Joint Program Office, and consult Commerce, Energy, and other relevant agencies to promote interoperability. These are programmatic directives rather than direct regulatory mandates, but they set concrete administrative timelines and expectations that will shape grant conditions, procurement specifications, and data-sharing agreements.
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Explore Transportation in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- State departments of transportation — Gain explicit authority to spend HSIP and NHFP funds on telematics, predictive analytics, and related systems, allowing them to incorporate proactive risk identification and performance evaluation into project selection and measurement.
- Metropolitan planning organizations and MPO-led planning teams — Will be able to integrate analytics outputs into performance-based planning under sections 134/135 and to justify investments with comparative benefit assessments required by the amendments.
- Freight operators and terminals — Can participate in intelligent freight transportation systems eligible for funding (including communications and dedicated intelligent freight lanes), potentially improving route safety and efficiency and receiving federal support for connected infrastructure.
- Safety analytics vendors and systems integrators — See an expanded market: federal grant eligibility makes state procurements for telematics, predictive models, and validation services more likely and easier to justify.
- Researchers and highway-safety practitioners — Benefit from new statutory emphasis on validated methodologies and requirements for comparative evaluations, which will produce richer, standardized datasets for study and program improvement.
Who Bears the Cost
- State and local agencies — Must allocate funding, staff time, and procurement capacity to implement anonymization, validation, data governance, and to deploy and maintain telematics/analytics systems; smaller jurisdictions may need technical assistance or face substitution of capital for labor resources.
- Federal DOT components (FHWA, NHTSA, FMCSA, FRA) — Will absorb coordination, guidance-development, and reporting responsibilities; the bill creates administrative workloads without authorizing new appropriations.
- Privacy and legal compliance teams — States and vendors will need to build or expand privacy protections, data-use agreements, and liability analyses to meet DOT guidance on PII protection and transparency, increasing compliance costs.
- Vendors and technology providers — Must meet expectations for validated methodologies and interoperability; that can raise R&D and certification costs and may favor larger suppliers able to demonstrate actuarial or behavioral validation.
- Small governments and under-resourced MPOs — Face a competitive disadvantage in grant applications if they lack the staff or analytic capacity to propose validated predictive solutions, potentially channeling federal funds to better-resourced states and regions.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is trade-off between accelerating safety gains by deploying granular predictive analytics and telematics at scale versus protecting privacy, ensuring methodological validity, and preventing uneven adoption: the bill empowers data-driven interventions but leaves open who sets validation and privacy thresholds, how interoperability is achieved, and how under-resourced agencies will shoulder costs—forcing a choice between rapid technological uptake and careful, equitable governance.
The bill pushes federal policy toward data-driven safety but leaves important operational questions unsettled. "Validated methodology" is emphasized, and examples (actuarial validation, behavioral risk analysis) are cited, but the statute does not define minimum validation standards, who certifies validation, or how legacy crash-data limitations should be addressed. That gap creates potential variability in what states and vendors consider "validated," with implications for procurement, grant competitiveness, and liability if models misclassify risk.
Privacy and data governance are addressed through a required DOT guidance on anonymization and PII protection, but the guidance will be non-statutory best practices rather than a prescriptive regulatory framework. That makes implementation uneven: states seeking aggressive analytics deployments will press for permissive guidance, while privacy advocates and courts could later demand stronger protections.
The coordination mandate spans multiple DOT components and other agencies, but without earmarked funding or a clear governance structure, interoperability and standard-setting may stall or favor well-resourced stakeholders.
Finally, the bill increases demand for sensors, telematics, and vendor services, which raises procurement and lifecycle-cost questions. Small jurisdictions and under-resourced MPOs risk falling behind; conversely, large vendors could gain disproportionate influence if contracts emphasize validated black-box models rather than transparent methods.
Those dynamics implicate equity, antitrust, and long-term maintenance risks that the text does not directly mitigate.
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