The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). NHTSA's mission is to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce traffic-related health care and other economic costs. The agency develops, promotes and implements effective educational, engineering and enforcement programs with the goal of ending preventable tragedies and reducing economic costs associated with vehicle use and highway travel. Current data is essential to develop future approaches to improve traffic safety. Pursuant to 23 U.S.C. - 403, NHTSA is authorized to collect data and develop programs appropriate for highway traffic safety. Many States have implemented laws to ban drivers from using hand-held cell phones or texting while driving. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), as of November, 2014, 44 States and the District of Columbia have laws banning text messaging by drivers and an additional 4 States have texting laws specific to novice drivers. There are fewer laws banning hand-held phone use by drivers, with only 14 States (i.e., California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia) and the District of Columbia having such laws.[1] Distracted driving laws vary across the States in how they are written and how they can be enforced. Some laws specify particular behaviors, such as reading, writing, or sending a text message, but don't include the many other actions that could be completed on a hand-held device, such as dialing a phone number, searching the internet, or emailing. Laws like this require enforcement to differentiate between particular actions, a requirement identified as challenging by States in the 2012 GHSA Distracted Driving Survey.[2] For example, Indiana reported, "Yes. It is being enforced, but lightly. Many officers are reluctant to enforce it because they claim they cannot tell if someone is dialing a number or texting." The GHSA survey suggests States are having problems enforcing distracted driving laws, which may, at least partially, explain why respondents reported such low awareness of distracted driving enforcement in NHTSA's 2012 National Survey on Distracted Driving Attitudes and Behaviors.[3] Due to the increasing number of law enforcement agencies that are mobilizing to enforce State legislation restricting hand-held phone use and texting among drivers, and the apparent challenges faced by States to enforce such laws, providing a comprehensive picture of the laws across the States, including the challenges faced by enforcement and the strategies used to overcome those challenges, will help produce feasible enforcement actions, and stimulate the issuance of citations for drivers who engage in these dangerous behaviors. NHTSA seeks a Contractor to procure professional and technical services to catalog all distracted driving laws to identify clusters of law types, conduct a survey of law enforcement from each law type identified to learn about the challenges faced by enforcement operating under these law types, and find out about enforcement strategies used to overcome these challenges. This research is not intended to make inferences about the larger law enforcement population, but rather provide a preliminary investigation of specific agencies with specific types of distracted driving laws to describe and learn from their experiences. This acquisition is being offered total small business set aside. The NAICS Code for the anticipated contract is 541910. Contractors must be registered in the Systems for Award Management Database located at http://www.sams.gov, and must complete electronic representations and certification on the ORCA database located at http://orca.bpn.gov to be considered for contract award. It is the Government's intent to award a Cost Plus Fixed Fee type contract resulting from the solicitation, with or without discussions, to the responsible offeror whose proposal, conforming to the solicitation, is most advantageous to the Government based on the evaluation factors contained in the solicitation. It is the Offeror's responsibility to monitor the FedBizOpps Internet site for the release of the solicitation and amendments (if any). Potential Offerors will be responsible for downloading their own copy of the solicitation and amendments (if any). Requests for paper copies of the RFP will not be accepted. The estimated date for release of the solicitation is on or about April 06, 2015. Period of Performance: Thirty-six (36) months. Contract Award: The anticipated award date for the resultant contract is expected to be on or before September 30, 2015. [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/cellphonelaws?topicName=distracted-driving [2] The Governors Highway Safety Association. (2013). Distracted driving survey of the States. Retrieved from http://www.teensafedriver.com/doc/distracted-driving-survey-of-states.pdf [3] Schroeder, P., Meyers, M., & Kostyniuk, L. (2013, April). National survey on distracted driving attitudes and behaviors - 2012. (Report No. DOT HS 811 729). Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
