- Author
-
Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Title
- Emergency Vehicle Safety Initiative.
- Coporate
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC
- Report
-
FA-272
August 2004
126 p.
- Keywords
-
fire fighting vehicles
|
safety devices
|
highways
|
response time
|
training
|
fire fighting equipment
|
transportation
|
human factors engineering
|
maintenance
|
fire statistics
- Identifiers
- initiative overview; agency profiles; apparatus safety devices; traffic control measures; highway operations
- Abstract
- As traffic volume increases and the highway and interstate system becomes more complex, emergency responders face a growing risk to their personal safety while managing and working at highway incidents. The purpose of this report is to identify practices that have the potential to decrease that risk, as well as to reduce the number of injuries and deaths that occur while responding to and returning from incidents. Since 1984, 20 to 25 percent of firefighter fatalities annually resulted from motor vehicle crashes. From 1990 to 2000, 18 percent of the fatalities occurred responding to an alarm, and 4.1 percent occurred returning from an alarm. Of the firefighters who died in motor vehicle crashes, 25 percent were killed in privately owned vehicles (POV's.) Following POV's, water tankers, engines, and airplanes were most often involved in fatal crashes. Tankers claimed more fatalities than engines and aerial apparatus combined. Approximately 27 percent of fatalities were ejected at the time of the crash. Only 21 percent were reportedly wearing restraints prior to the crash. Table 1-1 provides a summary analysis of fatal emergency vehicle crashes that occurred while responding to and returning from an alarm from 1994 to 2001.