Who Should Take the Training?
I’m hoping most towers have heard of SHRP2 (Strategic Highway Research Program), which is a Traffic Incident Management (TIM) training program offered by the Federal Highway Administration in partnership with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
The program’s goal is to improve traffic incident responder safety and offer a unified team approach to clear roads faster and reduce congestion. It’s a national curriculum to build a team of well-trained responders that work together from the moment the first emergency call is made to final scene clearance.
The training brings together police, firefighters, emergency medical personnel, state and local transportation agencies, towing and other incident responders.
I challenge anyone in the towing and recovery industry to get this training. You’ll have a better understanding of what other responders do to safely and quickly respond to, resolve and safely exit an incident scene.
According to the National Traffic Incident Management Responder Training Program, as of January 2019, the number of those who have been trained in the towing and recovery sector is 34,872, which is only 9 percent of all towers. As an industry, we need to aggressively increase this number.
My husband and I sponsored a classroom training session at our shop and I found it to be well worth my time to learn about TIM best practices such as safe vehicle positioning, telecommunications and TIM fundamentals and terminology.
There is no cost — this training is free. All that’s needed is four hours of your time to attend a session, or you can take online training and complete the modules on your schedule. For more information about training opportunities in your region contact TIMTraining@dot.gov.
Can’t get away for four hours? To register for the free National Highway Institute TIM online training go to the National Highway Institute’s webpage at nhi.fhwa.dot.gov.
Main point: Take the time to get trained. Help improve safety to save lives at traffic incidents.