Highway Safety Struck-By Prevention

[rmoore]

This is the scene as you pull up. You are an officer; say maybe even a Chief Officer. Your engine and ambulance are on the scene of what was called in as a vehicle crash. Turns out it is a car vs. bicyclist and the patient from the bike is now down along the shoulder of the road. It is 11am on a weekday.

Are you comfortable with what you see? Are we set up the way the department is trained to establish a traffic incident management area? Is there anything you would do to improve our "struck-by resistance"?

[Rescue101]

We have a longer taper/merge zone and a Emergency Scene ahead sign that is placed prior to the scene. In this one snapshot there are things I might question that are in place,just not obvious from this shot. T.C.

[Bones42]

Our engine would be angled outwards, not inwards.

[BoxAlarm187]

Have to agree with the points made by Bones and TC. The taper area is about 1/4 of what it should be, especially when you use the rule of 100' of taper for every 10mph on the roadway. Assuming that this is a 65mph roadway, that comes out to 650' of taper.

Also, unless the pump operator HAS to be protected, I always prefer to point the rig in the way that I want traffic to merge. Using the biggest vehicle on the scene to provide a visual indication of the merge direction is a great practice.

I do commend them for using the tall cones, and making sure the cones extend along the perimeter of the incident scene.

[pasobuff]

Also, I'd have protection past the engine - to keep people from sliding back over too soon...or wrecking.......so hopefully this doesn't happen....