First responders given site to train for traffic
Clearing wrecks key to preventing secondary crashes
A silver Honda Civic, tipped on its side, spills shattered glass onto the road. Behind it, a Hyundai Elantra is wedged into the rear of a Buick LeSabre, while a mangled Chevy Cavalier, sideswiped by a minivan, adds to the sense of chaos overtaking the pileup.
This was the scene Thursday in Douglas County, at a facility that officials hope will teach emergency personnel across the state how to clear crash scenes quickly and, in turn, stay alive.
“This is about working together and finding ways to make our highways more reliable and safer for our first responders,” Mike Lewis, the Colorado Department of Transportation’s executive director, said Thursday at the new facility.
Also at the facility, which officials call a traffic incident management training center, were family members of Colorado State Trooper Jaimie Jursevics and Trooper Cody Donahue, both of whom died after being struck by passing vehicles during separate crash investigations 3 miles and one year apart on Interstate 25 south of Castle Rock.
Jursevics was killed in November 2015, while Donahue was killed in November 2016. A highway sign honoring them was dedicated at Thursday’s opening.
“It’s a pretty awesome effort to see,” D.J. Jursevics, Jaimie’s widower, said as he looked at the training facility’s 1,100-foot-long and 80-foot-wide strip of interstate-style concrete, which sits on county-owned land southwest of West Titan Road and Santa Fe Drive.
The facility is the second of its kind in the country.
“It’s the exact dimensions of a freeway,” Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said of the $1.5 million track, which contains 2,200 cubic yards of concrete and has simulated on- and offramps. “We can clearly save lives by training our officers and other first responders to be aware of the situation they are in.”
Officers will practice various methods to clear mock crashes as quickly as they can, including pushing and uprighting vehicles and towing them away from the danger zone. Most of the training on clearing crashes currently happens in the classroom, which CDOT’s director of operations, Ryan Rice, said is no substitute for hands-on experience.
“The classroom training is critical,” he said. “The field training is even more critical.”
According to CDOT, federal statistics show that up to 1 in 4 traffic incidents are secondary crashes. And secondary crashes are estimated to cause 18 percent of all fatalities on freeways. For every minute a primary incident continues to be a
hazard, the likelihood of a secondary crash goes up nearly 3 percent, the data show.
That means speed is of the essence when it comes to clearing the highway, Rice said.
“We want them to operate like a NASCAR pit crew with these crashes,” he said.
A fatal collision in 2013 on Interstate 24 in Tennessee prompted that state to put into operation the nation’s first traffic incident management training facility.
At that scene, a tractortrailer smashed into the back of a young Indiana couple’s car that was stuck at the end of a line of traffic awaiting clearance of an accident farther up the road.
The $1 million track in that state, similar to what opened Thursday, debuted in 2014.
“It’s probably some of the best money that any government agency has ever spent,” said Lt. Bill Miller, a spokesman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. “We all know the same training techniques, and it’s created uniformity in how we approach a crash.”
He said not only do police, firefighters and paramedics practice on the Nashville track, but tow truck drivers have also put time in on the course.
Last year, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law the “Move Over for Cody Act,” which increased potential jail time and financial penalties for drivers in Colorado who fail to move over for emergency responders, especially in situations that lead to vehicular damage or injury or death.
CDOT’s Rice said as important as the training center is, having the attention and cooperation of motorists is critical to ensuring that another law enforcement death doesn’t happen again.
“We can’t get that risk down to zero,” he said. “It is an absolute partnership with the public.”