Line Dancing

Avoid Highway Hazards with Traffic Control Measures

By John Borowski

Although today’s vehicles are much more complicated, they also perform much better than vehicles from decades ago. Understanding that, it is much easier for the multitasking motor vehicle operator to get distracted and possibly cause an accident.

On a positive note, many states are working to prevent distracted driving, and most have enacted laws to address this specific problem. These include banning texting while driving, implementing handsfree laws, and limiting the number of young passengers who can ride with teen drivers.

While the effectiveness of cell phone and texting laws requires further study, high-visibility enforcement (HVE) efforts for distracted driving laws can be effective in reducing cell phone use while driving. These projects increase police enforcement of distracted driving laws as well as awareness of distracted driving using radio advertisements, news stories, and similar media.

What Towmen Can Do

Understanding these hazards is just the first step to protecting yourself while working roadside. Since distracted drivers are continuing with their bad habits, towers need to plan accordingly. Here are some traffic-control safety items to prevent collisions that can and will inevitably save lives:

• Scorpion Attenuator

A truck-mounted attenuator is a kinetic absorption device that absorbs impact when hit. In simple terms, it’s a crash cushion that is mounted to the rear of a designated safety truck.

• HAAS Alert

HAAS Alert's digital alerting solution

Safety Cloud is a breakthrough evolution in emergency alerting, bringing critical real-time connectivity to roads and transforming emergency alerting for a new century.

• NiteBeams

By placing a NiteBeams Cone Commander on top of a traffic cone, with 360 degrees of LEDs, it

illuminates that cone for a mile in every direction.

• Arrows

Traffic Arrow boards are highly visible and reliable from distances of a mile or more. Bright LED arrow lights direct traffic by flashing an arrow pattern on a large blackboard. Warning messages such as “Move Over” are also displayed.

Advance Planning

Your conduct plays an enormous role in getting back home safely. The entire process of arriving on the scene should be a planned performance of smooth entry and efficient exiting. It needs to be handled as quickly as possible in order to return to the safety of your cab, followed by a safe and proper departure.

While on scene, the tow operator should never lose sight of moving traffic, otherwise known as upstream traffic. You should continually be considering an escape route in the event it becomes necessary. Other people present should be directed either out of the roadway, into your cab, or otherwise staying together upstream of the disabled vehicle.

People traveling past any scene have a natural tendency to rubberneck to see what is happening, and this can cause them to drift toward you. Avoiding longer observation times by distracted motorists will help you evade straying vehicles, and also a potential multivehicle crash that sends several sliding vehicles into you. This as a result of motorists braking while looking at roadside scenes, and vehicles behind them also viewing the same scene and failing to brake, causing a domino effect of cars slamming into one another.

Key Findings

According to the AAA, despite all 50 states having “Move Over Laws” on the books, traffic incident management (TIM) responders are still being regularly injured on the nation’s roadways. To help protect responders, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety ◀ recently published a project titled “Protecting Roadside Workers: Field Evaluation of Flares, Cones & Tow Truck Light Patterns” which evaluated the effectiveness of various countermeasures in protecting roadside workers. The key findings are outlined below.

The Evaluation of Flares and Cones in Combination with Two Different Light Patterns

• Neither flares nor cones produced a significant change in the occupancy of Lane 1 during the daytime

• Flares being added to the truck displaying the Daytime light pattern at night, significantly decreased the occupancy of Lane 1. The addition of cones produced only a very small additional reduction that did not reach statistical significance

• When paired with the nighttime light pattern at night, both flares and cones yielded a large and statistically reliable shift out of Lane 1.

• When flares or cones were added to the Daytime Light Pattern at night, both were associated with significant increases in Lane 1 speed and decreases in the lateral distance.

• In contrast, when added to the Nighttime light pattern, both cones and flares showed decreases in Lane 1 speed, although only the latter reached statistical reliability. Flares also resulted in a larger lateral distance of passing vehicles while cones yielded a small decrease in that measure, although neither of the changes reached statistical reliability.

The Takeaways

While more research needs to be done, the initial findings seem to highlight the importance of using lighting patterns that automatically adjust the light intensity and flash rates appropriate to the ambient situation, particularly at night. For example, using bright, intense, random flashes during the day, and much slower, synchronized, lower-intensity, and flash rates at night, both yield positive results. Used in conjunction with Nighttime lighting at night, flares also appear particularly promising for slowing down and shifting motorists out of Lane 1.

Many of the bad motorists have continued their unsafe practices since law enforcement has reduced citing drivers with infractions since the Pandemic. Officers were urged by their departments to minimize exposure to motorists and overlooked minor infractions allowing operators to persist in their distracted driving habits. Defensive driving courses can protect you from those errant operators, and they might help to overcome this serious issue.