Dr. Harry Carter: Attacking the “D” Driver Problem

They are out there all around us on the highways and byways of our nation. They are talking on their phones. They are putting on their makeup. They are reading the newspaper. They are drunk. They are operating without enough sleep. These are the folks that Respondersafety.com has labeled the “D” Drivers. They are:

• Drunk
• Distracted
• Drowsy

For almost 20 years now we here at Respondersafety.com have devoted our efforts to educating the members of the fire, police, EMS, and towing industry about the hazards we all face when operating out on the highways in areas. We are now going to move in a new direction. It is our intention to begin a public safety educational program which we belief will success through your efforts to educate the driving public in your response districts. We are calling upon you to get the word out.

To assist in this effort we have created a new set of resources which are now available to you. These can be found on our Respondersafety.com website under the PIO task bar. This can be found under the key initiative tab under the About Us tab on our home page. We would urge you to go to our homepage and take a look at the resources which are now available to help you educate the public as well as your own staff.

Every day across America, distracted and uninformed drivers pose a major threat to the safety and wellbeing of first responders who risk their own lives on roads and highways to assist those involved in traffic incidents. Please join us in an effort to reach the traveling public with roadway incident response messages that will help keep them and your personnel safe.

The new page debuts during National Traffic Incident Response Week whose theme “We’re All in This Together” fits perfectly with ResponderSafety.com’s mission to improve safety and traffic incident management for all agencies who respond to roadway incidents. During this week, departments are asked to examine and redouble their efforts to teach each other and the public about traffic incident response issues.

“Our timing is perfect,” said Jack Sullivan, Director of Training for ResponderSafety.com. “We’ve been working on safety and traffic incident management issues for a long time within the responder community and it became clear to us that, to truly reduce the number of struck by incidents to zero, we needed to involve the public as an active partner”.

On this new page, we have compiled the resources of most value to Public Information Officers (PIOs) who communicate with media outlets, as well as to fire and life safety educators and others within your department who communicate with the public. We encourage you to explore the full ResponderSafety.com web site. Here are some of the resources which are available to you:

• Video public service announcements
• Media advisories
• Public service annouuncments
• Sample media contact emails
• Push cards
• Infographics (facts, figures, and statistics)
• Backgrounders (Information to share with leadership on what the program is)
• List of resources available to you
• NIOSH case studies on "struck-by" incidents

You can make a difference. Please join with us as we seek expand our impact in order to protect our emergency responder and towing industry communities.