Driving Online

The Department of Homeland Security's United States Fire Administration (USFA) and the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) have joined forces to create an online educational program - the Emergency Vehicle Safe Operations for Volunteer and Small Combination Emergency Service Organizations.

The Web-based program includes an emergency vehicle safety best practices self-assessment, standard operating guideline examples and behavioral motivation techniques to enhance emergency vehicle safety. The project is under contract to the USFA to assist with implementing some of the initiatives from the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation's 16 safety initiatives.

According to a report from the USFA and NVFC, approximately 25% of firefighters killed in the line of duty die while responding to or returning from an incident. Many firefighters also die from being hit by a vehicle while working at an emergency incident. Vehicle crashes, says the report, are now the second-leading cause of on-duty deaths (behind cardiac arrest) in the volunteer fire service. In addition, collisions cause injuries that can be more costly than death in terms of long-term pain, suffering and expense.

"The intent of the program that we designed was to find the major issues facing volunteer and combination departments in their vehicle-safety programs and then find ways for departments to get assistance," says project manager Bill Jenaway, PhD, vice president of York, PA-based emergency services insurer VFIS. "That meant that we first had to do an analysis and identify some of the problems, then design the remedies or solutions that would benefit them. Those came in the form of an assessment tool that takes users through a series of 10 major issues on vehicle safety and allows them to self-assess where they stand in relation to having such a program, capability or component. If they need assistance - if they don't meet the expectations - then we give them recommended sources where they can go for details, like reference manuals, etc."

The next part of the program is a series of standard operating guidelines, which small departments indicated they want, says Jenaway.

"We conducted focus groups, and every group told us, 'Give us an assessment tool and standard operating guideline formats that we can use,'" he says. "So the final aspect of the program is a series of 25 standard operating guidelines that fire departments or ambulance squads can use to create their own protocols." Some of the SOGs include: collision investigation, driver qualifications and selection, drug/alcohol policy, emergency vehicle driver training, highway safety, routine maintenance, seat belt policy and more.

Does the necessity for this program mean that smaller and volunteer departments have a higher accident rate?

"No," says Jenaway. "The major difference is that large organizations have the resources to dedicate to a fleet manager or someone who will take on full responsibility for vehicle maintenance and safety, and all the programs related to vehicle management. Smaller departments may have one individual who takes charge of each vehicle, but they tend to use the programmatic issues differently. It tends to be more routine or as needed versus the bigger departments' comprehensive fleet management programs."

Although the program is still too new to gauge whether it is making a difference, the NVFC will monitor the website during the coming year to see how many hits it has had and how it is being used.

"We've learned a couple of things from our research," says Jenaway, "one of them being that managing driver behavior is a major component. If you train people properly, give them standard operating guidelines to follow and enforce the guidelines, your probability of having a safer operation is much higher than if there are no controls and no supervision. The tools that we're providing are: how to run a program, how to supervise it and how to manage it."

For more information about this program, as well as other USFA efforts in emergency vehicle safety, visit www.usfa.fema.gov/research/safety/vehicle.shtm. It is also accessible from the NVFC website at www.nvfc.org/evsp/index.html.