Overview
Highway incidents may include the incidents such as crashes, disabled or abandoned vehicles, debris on the road, work zones and other emergencies. These incidents often have substantial direct costs, including the deaths, injuries, and property damage that result from highway crashes. In addition, highway incidents may have large secondary costs. Traveler delay, reduced productivity, increased costs of goods and services, increased fuel consumption, increased air pollution, and secondary crashes can result from highway incidents. All of these secondary costs can be minimized through effective management of highway incidents.
Kentucky has recently completed a formal evaluation of the current state of highway incident management to assess achievements and identify needs. This evaluation was conducted using the Federal Highway Administration sponsored tool known as the “Traffic Incident Management (TIM) Self-Assessment” tool. The Northern Kentucky / Cincinnati region and the Lexington area scored above the national average with 3.0 and 2.7, respectively. The national average score reached 1.8 out of 4.0. Louisville was ranked next with 1.4, followed by Kentucky Emergency Management (KYEM) Area 4 with 1.3, KYEM Area 10 with 0.9, and KYEM Area 11 with 0.6.
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Emphasis Area Goal
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Kentucky State Police, Kentucky Emergency Management, Federal Highway Administration, Transportation Research Board, Northrop Grumman, and Dunn Engineering Associates have recently collaborated to develop an overall plan for a systematic, statewide and multi-agency effort to improve the highway incident management. The four primary goals identified in the plan are:
- Improve safety of responders, highway workers and motorists
- Reduce traffic delay
- Improve motorist awareness
- Improve responder and highway worker preparedness
Strategies
A stakeholder forum was conducted to identify and prioritize strategies related to highway incident management in Kentucky. The incident management strategies are organized as high, medium, or low priority. All of the strategies identified in the incident management plan are important and potentially beneficial, but, on a comparative basis, some of the strategies rank as higher priority than others.
High Priority Action Strategies
- Initiate a public information campaign for motorists on the proper response to an incident.
- Develop and implement alternate route plans for all critical roadways.
- Implement emergency response vehicle parking plans.
- Implement a statewide policy concerning the cleanup of small fuel spills.
- Develop and implement hazardous material ordinances for every county.
- Implement quick clearance and vehicle removal laws that include clauses for limiting liability to responders.
- Implement a highway incident reporting hotline for motorists.
- Implement reference and ramp markers in high incident areas or on critical routes.
- Identify best practices with regard to communications interoperability and implement changes.
- Identify critical or “Decision Point” locations where ITS technology should be located to disseminate incident information.
- Identify the current problems with the 511 system and implement strategies for improving the system.
- Provide local interagency incident management training for all responding agencies.
- Develop a course on traffic control for emergency response personnel and train responders.
- Establish a statewide incident management task force to coordinate statewide efforts and provide leadership and direction for incident management on a statewide level.
- Establish or enhance local incident management teams and cultivate their development.
- Sponsor post incident debriefings for all major incidents.
- Share Kentucky’s highway incident management strategic plan with responders and update the plan regularly.
Medium Priority Action Strategies
- Develop emergency vehicle lighting guidelines and encourage responding agencies to adopt their own policy.
- Improve the warning system for the end of the traffic queue at major incidents and during construction or maintenance activities.
- Identify and address the delays and safety problems associated with work zones and maintenance activities.
- Implement push bumpers for responder vehicles.
- Perform a comparative analysis of crash reconstruction equipment and make recommendations for implementation.
- Implement an incident response team as a pilot project in a high incident area or on a critical route.
- Expand the freeway service patrols in urban areas and consider implementation on some rural corridors.
- Implement a pilot project that makes use of an on-scene traffic manager at all major incidents.
- Implement a towing incentive program as a pilot project and study the benefits.
- Change in policy or legislation regarding the removal of deceased victims.
- Implement barrier openings or emergency crossovers where needed.
- Enhance the capability of current traffic management centers and implement other centers, as needed.
- Identify and address the issues with providing timely incident information to the public.
- Partner with the media for incident information dissemination.
- Promote the use of the national incident management system.
- Enhance training for dispatchers.
- Incorporate incident management training into the basic training of all responders.
- Encourage and aid incident management teams in the development of an incident response manual.
- Establish a system for ranking the seriousness of incidents.
Low Priority Action Strategies
- Investigate the use of portable barrier curtains and implement on a pilot project basis.
- Better understand the problem with secondary crashes in Kentucky and identify means to address these problems.
- Develop an open roads policy for interstates and parkways.
- Update the crash reporting form to encourage quick clearance.
- Identify crash investigation sites and educate responders in the benefits of moving the incident off the roadway.
- Implement a pilot project using automatic cargo identification technology on hazardous material vehicles.
- Evaluate automatic vehicle location and computer aided dispatch for response vehicles.
- Make use of equipment storage sites as a pilot project in one critical area
- Provide 24-hour incident response by all Kentucky Transportation Cabinet district offices.
- Develop an architecture for sharing incident information among responding agencies, with the statewide Transportation Operation Center, and (where applicable) with local Traffic Management Centers.
- Sponsor the national highway institute course on incident management for responders.
- Incorporate a mock disaster exercise as part of the annual training for responders.
- Sponsor an annual statewide conference to encourage interaction among responders and promote new initiatives in highway incident management.
Performance Measures
- Number of injury/fatal/total crashes involving incident management
- Average incident response time
- Average incident clearance time
- KYEM, TIM Self-Assessment score
