A new year is upon us once again my friends. We have learned a great deal from the past year and are now moving forward on a number of fronts. It is hard to believe that we have been at this for nearly nine years now. Some days it seems like we are making progress, and sometimes it does not.
One of the major problems I seem to see repeating itself comes from human nature. We keep doing the same things that have killed us in the past. We keep using the phrase “change the culture of our organizations” as though it was some sort of magic mantra which will save our people just by repeating its melodious incantation.
Gandhi was often heard to say that in order to be successful in creating change people would be well served to live the changes they wanted to see. However, time after time I encounter people using do as I say not as I do management. Sometimes people outside of our business make observations that we would be well-served to examine.
Back on New Year’s Day Officer Courtney Brooks, a 13-year veteran Maryland Transportation Authority officer, was working as part of the commercial vehicle safety unit. As he set down flares along I-95 and the 395 exit to keep trucks out of the city during the New Year’s celebration, a motorist struck him and took off. Brooks died from his injuries.
As I was posting this sad story on our website, I observed a comment made to the Baltimore newspaper wherein the story was carried from a motorist who had passed by not long before the incident. In that comment the writer observed that she thought that what the officer was doing looked dangerous. If it looked dangerous to her, perhaps it was dangerous. Officer Brooks’ death serves as sort of an affirmation of finality.
Maybe we all need to take a closer look at what we are doing and how we are doing it. In line with this our group just completed an extremely successful train-the-trainer session on the new National Unified Goal of Traffic Incident Management. The program was held at the Fire Department Safety Officer's Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Jack Sullivan, the Emergency Response Safety Institute’s Director of Training, presented a seminar in Orlando, Florida on Managing Emergency Incidents on the Roadway. The program addressed the need for Multidisciplinary NIMS and Traffic Incident Management (TIM) training identified in the National Unified Goal for Traffic Incident Management developed by the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition.
Attendees participated in and learned how to facilitate table-top exercises that reinforce the implementation of ICS and unified command at emergency incidents on the roadway. Training materials developed by the Emergency Responder Safety Institute were provided to all participants at no charge.
Steve Austin has asked me to discuss the fact that a primary focus is on implementing the new National Goal for Traffic Incident Management (NUG). The NUG includes Responder Safety, Safe Quick Clearance and Interoperable Communications. Information about the NUG is being provided at many area on our Respondersafety.com site.
We also are providing a Power Point program in order to enable you to teach this program in your station. We want you to know that future offerings of this train-the-trainer course will be held in Marathon Key, Florida, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Jackson Mills, West Virginia and Prior Lake, Minnesota among others. Keep an eye out for them here at Respondersafety.com.
We believe that it is critical to learn how to be safer by working with all the responders in your area, including fire, EMS, law enforcement, towing operators, DOT's and the local news media. It is essential to create a team approach to providing a safer environment for your personnel.
Each year we look for a new beginning in our lives. Let us resolve to make highway safety a priority this year. I am sure that our friends and families will say thank you.