According to the most recent data, from 2021, at least 7 assistance operators died, implying a mortality rate of 0.062%, higher than in other sectors of economic activity.
The Roadside Assistance Alliance, the body representing the roadside assistance sector, is once again drawing the attention of society and the authorities responsible for road safety to the high accident rate involved in the profession of assistance operator on public roads and to the shortcomings in public policies to reduce it, mainly on the part of the Ministry of the Interior.
Roadside assistance company operators work on the roads helping motorists who have suffered breakdowns or accidents, which puts them at risk of being run over. According to the latest data from 2021, compiled by REAC (the Red de Empresas de Auxilio en Carretera), at least 7 assistance operators died, implying a mortality rate of 0.062%, higher than in other sectors of economic activity. Unfortunately, there is no more reliable official data, as no public body concerns itself with these incidents.
Unfortunately, when roadside assistance operators are injured or killed in accidents, the data sources most widely used in road safety research do not reliably report the fact that the victim was a roadside assistance worker. When they are hit while working outside their vehicle, they are generally reported simply as pedestrians, which makes them indistinguishable from other pedestrians injured or killed in accidents.
These circumstances have been denounced for years by the associations of roadside assistance companies without receiving the attention of the Dirección General de Tráfico, de facto hampering previous efforts to study the safety of roadside assistance operators. In addition, real research is needed to understand the circumstances of accidents involving roadside assistance operators, in order to inform and prioritise efforts to protect them.
In any case, the Roadside Assistance Alliance makes the following recommendations:
- It is necessary to raise public awareness and increase compliance with the laws on slowing down and keeping clear of operating or moving zones by drivers, as well as to provide funding to research the most effective approaches to increasing compliance with the DGT's Roadside Assistance Protocol.
- There is a need to step up the current measures to protect roadside assistance operators, protecting those at the roadside from being hit or reducing the severity of any impact that may occur. Research is needed to determine which countermeasures are most effective and practical to meet this need.
- The training of assistance operators should emphasise the importance of avoiding working or standing on the traffic side of the incident scene whenever possible and minimising the time spent on the traffic side of the scene when it cannot be avoided completely, as well as providing strategies on how to do so, especially on high-speed roads.
- The accident report forms of the FFCCSE (Guardia Civil, regional and foral police forces and local police) should include data fields designed to report whether the victim of an accident was a roadside assistance operator, and consideration should be given to collecting additional information on accidents in which roadside assistance operators and other emergency response personnel are hit by vehicles, or at least on those that result in injury or death of the worker.
In this area of accident rates, the Roadside Assistance Alliance will take on all the challenges aimed at reducing accidents involving tow-truck operators, sadly killed in recent years, calling for a real and effective application of the Roadside Assistance Protocol for the greater safety of motorists and tow-truck drivers, on which the Alliance relies, together with the use of PPE, conspicuous colours on tow trucks, beacons and other emergency signage, to reduce these risks for assistance operators on public roads.