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Developing a Near-Miss Reporting System for Roadside Responders
The safety of roadside responders is often placed in jeopardy by the potential dangers posed by passing vehicles. To develop and implement effective protection measures for roadside responders, comprehensive safety data is essential. Traditional methods relying on crash data to identify incidents involving roadside responders, such as struck-by or secondary crashes, provide some information about the risks, but fail to capture information regarding near-miss incidents that occur far too often. These near misses, in which roadside technicians narrowly avoid crashes or harm, often go unreported and undocumented, creating a significant data gap. The lack of reliable information on the frequency and characteristics of near-miss incidents hinders efforts to understand the working environment of roadside responders and protect them while they assist other road users. Near-miss reporting systems are therefore invaluable tools for collecting this crucial data. Despite the existence of several reporting systems tailored for roadside responders and for workers in other domains, these platforms exhibit notable deficiencies in both the quality and quantity of reports submitted. These shortcomings highlight the necessity for a more robust and effective system. To address this critical issue, the current project aims to identify the elements required for a successful near-miss reporting system specifically designed for roadside responders.
Read the full report here.