Abstract:
Practitioners in the field of transportation have experienced first-hand the impact that traffic incidents can have on congestion and safety. The incidents create unsafe situations for the motoring public and responders and cripple traffic flow, resulting in unreliable trips. A key project in the Reliability focus area of the Transportation Research Board’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has addressed this problem. The project has developed a curriculum and program on traffic incident management (TIM) for the many types of responders who report to incident scenes—for example, departments of transportation, police, fire and rescue, towing and recovery, and emergency medical services personnel. To improve the effectiveness and consistency of TIM operations, the training provides a common set of competencies to help responders achieve the objectives of the national unified goals for TIM: responder safety; safe, quick clearance; and prompt, reliable, interoperable communications.
