Overview + Description

The Emergency Streets (ES) protocol enables municipal agencies to respond quickly, visibly, and responsibly to the most serious roadway crashes in their jurisdiction: those resulting in serious injury and/or death.

The ES approach demonstrates to staff, public officials, and the public at large that when someone dies in a traffic crash, an effective countermeasure is already within reach, and is preferable, rather than a return to "normal" traffic operations on roadways that have proven to be fatal. It highlights the reason we might not want that road to return to the previous state; it demonstrates the feasibility for a safer, alternative design for the very section of road.

The protocol empowers community leaders (who often feel pressured to respond to fatal crashes with more than condolences) to temporarily install a set of quick-build, mobile, and generally reusable traffic-calming infrastructure within hours of a fatal crash. A uniform set of tools is deployed to reduce crash- related kinetic energy—a fundamental reason for fatalities on local roadways—regardless of other factors.

Within 48 hours of an incident, a variety of mobile or modular devices and signage would be installed at the crash site (and extending along primary connecting street networks for ½ mile) to slow motor vehicle traffic by approximately 20 mph. While the temporary treatments are in effect, roughly two weeks, long enough to perform a proper investigation, local authorities are directed and empowered to assess:

• the ramifications of slowing traffic for the investigation period and the ramifications of extending the treatment beyond the two weeks,

• contributing causes of the crash and its severity (extending beyond the limited categories typically prescribed in a standardized statewide traffic incident report form),

• the degree to which an engineering or design flaw was a contributing factor to the crash and encouraged unsafe use of the vehicle.