Third Senior Executive Transportation and Public Safety Summit: Final Report

Executive Summary

On November 14 and 15, 2019, 120 national leaders among transportation, law enforcement, towing and recovery, fire, emergency medical services (EMS), public works, and traffic incident management (TIM)-related disciplines convened in Washington, DC for the third Senior Executive Transportation and Public Safety Summit. The TIM Executive Leadership Group (ELG), formed in 2012 as an outcome of the first summit, collectively convened this third summit with support by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Operations and National Highway Safety Transportation Administration (NHTSA). The TIM ELG outlined three goals for this summit:

1. Accelerate the use of proven TIM practices by inviting new partners to the summit and bringing considerably more attention to strategic, tactical and support efforts that foster TIM among local agencies.
2. Introduce new opportunities (policy, outreach, technology, training) to the broad range of stakeholders to improve TIM.
3. Renew focus on TIM at the highest levels of State and local responder agency leadership to expand the use of good TIM practices.

In keeping with the theme of this summit, Expanding Partnerships: Saving Lives, Time, and Money through TIM Innovations, participants representing 20+ national associations or organizations and three U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) modal agencies, as well as local, State, and Federal elected officials shared insights related to TIM. Participants represented 34 States and the District of Columbia. Mark Kehrli, FHWA Office of Operations Office of Transportation Operations Director, served as summit facilitator.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao served as the keynote speaker and highlighted opportunities through the USDOT Safety Data Initiative, which strives to evolve DOT practices from retrospective to predictive through data integration, analysis, and visualization. She emphasized the importance of collecting TIM data, and especially secondary crash data, as specified in the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC), the minimum dataset for describing motor vehicle crashes. She shared that safety is USDOT's first priority, and her role in the summit as one to help "amplify your voice and your message."

The FHWA Administrator and the Acting and Deputy Administrators, respectively, of NHTSA and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) collectively welcomed participants and offered brief opening remarks:

• FHWA Administrator Nicole R. Nason cited the dramatic rise in responder deaths from 2018 to 2019, noting "we can, and we must do better." Administrator Nason called on the TIM community to do their part to share best practices, and to "improve safe, quick clearance on our roads."
• NHTSA Acting Administrator James C. Owens spoke to their agency's efforts encouraging responder communities, travelers, and auto manufacturers to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes. He highlighted several initiatives, such as the Move Over law familiarity and adherence awareness campaign.
• FMCSA Deputy Administrator Jim Mullen shared FMCSA's mission to prevent crashes involving large trucks and buses and their regulating of 4.7 million holders of active commercial driver's licenses.

The summit guest speaker, U.S. Representative John H. Rutherford (FL-4) District and former Sheriff for Duval County, Florida, shared traffic safety transformation through education, enforcement, and engineering that he championed to focus on high-frequency crash locations. Representative Rutherford noted that cultural change is never easy, and he applauded the push to collect secondary crashes and responder struck-by information so that we may better understand the conditions and factors that are contributing to our law enforcement, tow operators, and rescue personnel being injured or killed while responding to incidents.

Eight topical sessions throughout the two days fostered dialogue and defined actions to advance TIM and the FHWA Office of Operations TIM Program goal to improve continuously responder and road user safety, travel reliability, and incident and emergency response efficiency. These sessions are summarized herein.

• TIM ELG Member Context Setting—Themes centered on improved collaboration for incident response, enhancing safe incident response practices among members, sharing of good practices and trends, and continuing to advance safe, quick clearing through local outreach, technology, and policies.
• Advancing TIM through Vision Zero, Road to Zero, and Towards Zero Deaths—This session, moderated by the FHWA Associate Administrator for Safety Cheryl Walker, brought to the forefront national and international initiatives with a vision for zero fatalities by advancing safety through engineering, enforcement, education, and emergency services. Participants and presenters discussed how to make TIM a more visible part of these and other safety initiatives.
• Strategies to Accelerate Responder Training—Participants and presenters discussed how everyone at the summit could and should help reach the goal of one million responders trained by encouraging constituents, members, academies, and TIM committees to institutionalize this training.
• Using Data to Improve TIM—Presenters highlighted national TIM programs that focus on performance measurement and data integration improvements, such as the Real-Time TIM Performance Measure Dashboard, the Capability Maturity Self-Assessment, the Every Day Counts Round Four Innovation, and the Computer-Aided Dispatch and Advanced Traffic Management System (CAD-ATMS) Integration.
• Advancing Local TIM through Partnerships—Panelists highlighted that local governments employ most personnel killed while responding to incidents, that the "Mind the Queue" TIM strategy can significantly reduce the frequency and severity of secondary crashes, and how State TIM laws have helped keep responders and travelers safe. Collaboratively, the panelists emphasized the importance of TIM for urban and rural communities and the importance of connecting with officials at every level to communicate TIM community purpose, benefits, and needs.
• State and Local TIM Laws—This session offered good practices to other State and local government entities for enacting TIM-focused laws, executive orders, and regulations to improve responder and traveler safety.
• Building Public Education and Outreach Momentum for TIM—Panelists shared their respective association or agency's role in advancing TIM; examples include interfacing between State authorities and the public, promoting uniformity in standards and practices, training drivers, generating publications on crash avoidance, or other efforts.
• Improving TIM Through Technology—This session presented participants with success stories in advancing TIM through unmanned aerial systems (UAS) usage for expedited accident reconstruction and improved situational awareness, crowdsourced data usage for quicker incident detection across broader geographies, and the integration of CAD-ATMS to seamlessly share data.

FHWA Associate Administrator for Operations Martin C. Knopp began the National Traffic Incident Response Awareness Week (NTIRAW) commemoration event by thanking the responder communities present and throughout the Nation that work tirelessly and risk their lives to keep travelers safe. Participants gathered outdoors amidst the backdrop of response vehicles and equipment to hear from retired Pennsylvania Police Sergeant Bemis, a responder struck during incident response, and to sign the NTIRAW proclamation.

Sergeant Bemis shared his journey from spinal injuries, loss of eyesight, days of hospitalization, months of therapy, and years of adjustment resulting from being struck to advocating for and delivering responder training. He stressed that his story of loss plays out across the Nation every day and emphasized his belief that TIM training principles, such as proper scene set-up and quick clearance, should be given equal importance to other training for incident responders.

Associate Administrator Knopp thanked summit participants and planners for making TIM a priority. He invited every individual present to sign the NITRAW proclamation, which resolves that all signees will continue efforts to improve the safety of America's road system and the responders who put themselves in harm's way to respond to emergency conditions.

The summit included time for all participants to share thoughts and offer suggestions to emphasize TIM at every level of operations within the United States. These inputs coalesced to identify eight "big recommendations" as follows:

1. Recommit to the goal of one million responders trained.
2. Engage elected officials on the importance of TIM.
3. Make local agencies aware of and understand the value of TIM.
4. Nurture relationships that will help change driver behavior towards TIM.
5. Refresh and refine the strategies and objects associated with the TIM National Unified Goal (NUG) of responder safety; safe, quick clearance; and prompt, reliable, interoperable communications. (The NUG is a unified national policy developed by major national organizations representing traffic incident responders.)
6. Make routine the collection of consistent data and sharing TIM performance measures.
7. Share best practices related to new technologies, tools, and techniques.
8. Fund TIM research and demonstration.

These eight recommendations will serve as priorities for the broader TIM communities, including the FHWA Office of Operations TIM Program, the TIM Executive Leadership Group, the 20+ associations and organizations participating in the summit, and the many other Federal and State agencies that can affect change and advance safe, quick roadway incidents clearance.