By Robert Kittle
South Carolina is looking for ways to clear accidents off of Interstate highways faster to cut down on the traffic jams you get stuck in. A state task force on Traffic Incident Management met Monday in Columbia to work on it. “One of the things of this initiative, of this state Traffic Incident Management Task Force, is bringing first responders together and training them in, like, a choreographed fashion of how to clear a roadway up,” says Mike Bowman, SCDOT Incident Response Management Coordinator.
He says every one minute of backed-up traffic takes four minutes of recovery time.
“We have laws in South Carolina that say drivers are responsible for moving their vehicles out of the roadway if there are no injuries,” Bowman says. “Certainly if there are, then we want to as expeditiously as we can, and safely, move those vehicles out of the roadway. So this type of training provides us with a venue, if you will, to share that information with other first responders so they know that their specific job duties are at an incident scene.”
The task force includes the DOT, Highway Patrol, local law enforcement, firefighters, EMS, tow truck operators, and other service agencies that are involved in responding to highway crashes.
One option the task force discussed is something being used in other states dealing with calling tow trucks. For one thing, instead of having a set rotation of towing companies and calling the one that’s next in line, other states call whichever company is closest to the wreck. For another, instead of waiting for a state trooper or local police to call a tow truck after arriving at an accident, some states dispatch tow trucks at the same time they dispatch troopers or police.
Bowman says in Mississippi, for example, they monitor DOT cameras and can dispatch police and tow trucks. “If they saw a car or saw a collision, in lieu of waiting for law enforcement and a tow truck to be dispatched to it, they could instantaneously call a tow truck and it could be on the way at the same time as law enforcement. And that would be something in an ideal world that we would like to look at in South Carolina, but certainly we’re not there.” He said it would require the money to have people monitoring DOT’s cameras as well as changes to tow truck regulations.
Another example of a change that can reduce traffic jams and even secondary collisions is to have first responders turn off their forward-facing flashing lights when they arrive on an accident scene. Bowman says they’ve found that, as drivers on the opposite side of the highway from an Interstate accident approach the scene, they see the flashing lights and slow down to see what’s going on. That causes traffic jams on that side of the highway as well, and often causes additional wrecks because traffic has slowed down.
Bowman says one step drivers can take on their own to avoid getting caught in traffic jams caused by wrecks is to download the free 511 South Carolina traffic phone app. You can find it in the Apple store or on Google play on your smart phone. With that app, you’ll see a state map and whatever traffic incidents the DOT is reporting, along with whatever messages the DOT is putting on its highway signs.