Assisting a vehicle on the open road involves risks. The United Nations Global Road Safety Week, held from 6 to 12 May, reminds us of something very painful: too many people still die on the roads.
And in the case of our profession – that of roadside assistance companies – the risk is enormous. If the slogan of this fifth Global Week was “Save lives”, it is clear that tow-truck operators should take it personally. Traveller assistance pays a heavy price when there are victims on the road or the hard shoulder, whether because of irresponsible drivers or because of some kind of oversight or recklessness. That is why we devoted a blog post to the Roadside Assistance Protocol of the Directorate-General for Traffic (DGT).
Training for roadside assistance operators is essential. Recent initiatives such as that of the Servei Català de Trànsit, with courses for professional drivers taught by officers of the Mossos d’Esquadra, not only provide information on accident rates in the sector – some twenty tow-truck operators killed between 2013 and 2014 – but also focus on the protocol while appealing to the emotions. One of those attending the course in this report by El Periódico de Catalunya complained about people who wander along the hard shoulder “as if they were strolling round Carrefour”, unaware of the danger they are in.
The Spanish Road Safety Strategy, which began in 2011 and ends in 2020, aims to reduce road accidents, as well as to improve the conditions in which assistance workers and emergency services work on the road network. In this respect, each intervention will depend on the type of road we are on, the vehicles involved and their particular situation.
“On the Road You Are Not Alone”
The results of the strategy will need to be examined in the light of data such as those provided by the DGT on the 2018 accident figures. That year, the number of people killed on motorways and dual carriageways rose from 208 to 303 – almost a hundred more. Most worrying, as far as the safety of tow truck services is concerned, was that 20% of these deaths were caused by being hit by a vehicle, or involved “people who got out of the vehicle or who were working”, according to Pere Navarro, Director-General for Traffic.
In January this year the campaign “On the Road You Are Not Alone” was launched. It was a campaign by the Association of Infrastructure Maintenance and Operation Companies (ACEX) with the collaboration of the DGT itself, as well as the Ministry of Public Works and the National Institute for Safety and Health at Work (INSST). The figures given by ACEX when the campaign was launched were, and still are, devastating: between 2008 and 2013, 34 accidents had been recorded, with 25 fatalities among people working on road maintenance.
The key messages of the campaign were aimed at vehicle users, workers and road operatives. Luis Fernández Gorostiza – president of ACEX – stressed that when passing an accident or incident we should all bear in mind that “there are people out there working”. Road safety during roadside assistance, and for road workers in general, depends on the shared awareness we are willing to develop. It is necessary.