An all-too-familiar incident from Fort Worth on Monday – a driver crashing into an emergency services vehicle on the side of the highway – serves as the latest public reminder of the dangers inherent in traffic control.
An all-too-familiar incident from Fort Worth on Monday — a driver crashing into an emergency services vehicle on the side of the highway — serves as the latest public reminder of the dangers inherent in traffic control.
“It’s no question; between a fire or on the side of the freeway, where we feel most vulnerable is the side of the freeway,” said Mike Drivdahl of the Fort Worth Fire Department.
At about 5:30 Monday morning, the driver of a green hatchback hit a Fort Worth fire truck that was attempting to block traffic in the right three lanes of southbound Interstate 35W beneath the Berry Street overpass. The truck was being used to provide protection for other first responders who were already on the scene of a prior crash in that area.
Four firefighters were inside of the truck, and were about to exit, at the time of the crash. The firefighters were okay, according to Drivdahl. The occupants of the car suffered minor injuries.
The fire truck sustained significant damage to its front axle and wheel assembly, according to Drivdahl, and will likely be taken out of service for months.
Drivdahl estimates an incident like the one from Monday morning happens to Fort Worth fire equipment, on average, once every other month.
In Dallas, a representative from Dallas Fire-Rescue noted that over a recent, three-year period their department had 62 incidents involving drivers crashing into fire equipment that was providing protection at the scene of prior accidents on highways.
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Earlier this year, Dallas Fire-Rescue instituted a program similar to one pioneered by the neighboring Irving Fire Department – using older, out-of-service fire trucks to serve as blockers for other first responders instead of using newer, “front line equipment.”
“People are the problem,” said Assistant Chief J. Taylor of the Irving Fire Department. “The unpredictability of the other drivers on the highway is what we cannot control, unfortunately.”
Chief Taylor blamed the rash of incidents — including two accidents involving blocker trucks since the program was first implemented in the summer of 2018 — on impaired drivers, distracted drivers who may be texting or looking at cellphones while at the wheel and on what he described as “the moth to the flame effect” where people are just instinctively drawn toward the flashing lights.
In Texas, the Move Over/Slow Down law requires drivers to “move over or slow down when approaching TxDOT workers and vehicles that are stopped with overhead flashing blue or amber lights.”
