Each time an Emergency Worker gets out of their vehicle to save or protect the lives of others, they are risking their own lives to careless, distracted or drunk drivers. Every year, hundreds of Police, Firefighters, EMTs, and Recovery Operators are killed or injured while performing their duties at emergency and accident scenes. Until recently, this was seen as an accepted risk inherent to the job, with no real solution and only luck to protect us.
I believe killing and maiming Public Safety and Emergency workers IS NOT an acceptable risk to be expected and mourned. Through new training, prior planning, interagency coordination, and improved legislation, there is a solution to address the problem and decrease this risk. We can never remove all the drunk and distracted drivers from the roadway, but with a Traffic Incident Management program in every state, we can reduce the risk and improve our chances of avoiding this kind of injury.
The Best Solutions, the best practices
According to DOT, Traffic Incident Management (TIM) " is a planned and coordinated program process to detect, respond to and remove traffic incidents and restore traffic capacity as safely and quickly as possible. This is a coordinated effort between Law Enforcement, Fire and Rescue, Emergency Medical Services, Transportation Public Safety Communications, Emergency Management, Towing and Recovery, Hazardous Materials Contractors and Traffic Information Media."
FHWA's Administrator Mary Peters has identified TIM as one of the FHWA�s Vital Few areas for program focus to relieve the effects of traffic congestion on our nation�s highways. The US Fire Administration has included required scene management consideration in the new NFPA 1001, and as noted on this site, new changes in national policy imply states should have similar programs in place within 2 years.
US DOT/FHWA has specified three areas through which TIM can help reduce scene time and decrease the chance of related secondary crashes and injuries.
Regional and Statewide Programs and Institutional Coordination
According to new MUTCD guidelines, "In order to reduce response time for traffic incidents, appropriate public safety agencies and private sector responders should mutually plan for occurrences of traffic incidents" . This may be accomplished through a TIM Panel, consisting of representitives of Police, Fire, EMS, Towing and DOT/Highway Engineers.
These State or Regional TIM panels will help approve state procedural guidelines and standards, address ITS advancements, resolve communication issues, set Incident Command duties, and coordinate operations training. They should set defined and measurable performance goals for the program.
DOT/FHWA Office of Operations is available to provide information and assistance to State DOT and Public Safety Programs interested in initiating a TIM program.
They also offer a TIM self assessment to measure the effectiveness of TIM programs at
http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/Travel/IncidentMgmt/timsa.htm
The National Highway Institute offers a Manager and Administrator course for TIM at
http://www.nhi.fhwa.dot.gov/coursedesc.asp?coursenum=86 to assist management and administrative level with developing State and regional TIMS panels.
Traffic Incident Management Operations
All emergency responders who are responsible for managing traffic (and if you get out of your rig on the highway, that includes you) are required by federal regulations to be adequately trained. This is a job we have learned through experience, but that is not a legal standard or adequate defense.
Our training needs to be uniform, standardized and meet MUTCD guidelines. It should be certified or approved through a sponsoring organization, and hold up as a reasonable standard in case of a court challenge. There have been incidents where responders have been sued and lost big for directing traffic at accident scenes.
There are several street level model courses under development for emergency workers; see Ohio DOT's model at http://www.dot.state.oh.us/quickclear/Slide%20Show/Quick_Clear.htm
or read about Pennsylvania's at the Responder Safety website
http://www.respondersafety.com/news/2002/june/13_mann.html
Other courses are being developed at the Volunteer Fire Insurance Service and the American Traffic Safety Services Association.
The University of Kentucky has also produced a helpful Incident Management Guide.
This website is currently working with the Responder Safety Institute and other organizations to find funding for a national TIM for Emergency Responders course. If you would like to be involved in the development of this course, please contact me at [email protected]
Integrated Interagency Communications
The third aspect of TIM is the development and deployment of Intellegent Transportation Systems (ITS) and improved scene communications. Currently, if the Medic on the scene needs to contact the Patrolman ten feet away, he has to call his dispatcher, ask them to call the state dispatcher, who will pass it on the the HP dispatcher, to call the Patrolman and let him know there's a out of control rig jack-knifing on top of him. If the Medic belongs to a rural system on a VHS frequency, there's a good chance he won't be able to reach his dispatcher, and if he's wandered into a urban system on an 800 mHz frequency, he can't talk to anybody. These communications systems problems need to be addressed as part of the Incident Command Structure for Mass Casualties and Homeland Security. South Carolina is currently implementing a VHF to 800mHz converter to allow all responders free communication access at large scale incidents.
ITS also includes new methods of transmitting road user data, variable message boards, enhanced cellular 911 locators, collision notification systems and other advancements in technology that will get the responders there faster, and divert others from the scene. The US DOT and the ITS Public Safety Program is working to improve emergency services through faster incident detection and notification, faster emergency response times, and real-time wireless communications links among emergency response organizations.
Improving safety at emergency and accident scenes is not luck, it is accomplished through an aggressive policy of training, communication, legislation and public awareness.
It is the responsibility of the Emergency Responder Community to develop and provide for these needs. There are many agencies involved, and the need for this training has been recognized at the highest levels. We need to come together now with an organized concept to get this training to each and every responder on the roadway.