HIGHWAY HAZARDS

Learn How to Serve as an Effective First Responder to Vehicular Trauma Incidents

- Joey Nickischer

Late one night, you’re traveling along a lonely stretch of road when you notice a car ahead of you drift off the road and cartwheel into a ditch, finally coming to rest upside down in the middle of the road. As you quickly come to a halt behind the wrecked car, you immediately begin to assess the situation. What’s the best course of action? What are the dangers involved? How can I help? Should I help?

As with any scenario, the number-one priority is your own safety — don’t put yourself in a position where you need to be rescued along with the victim you tried to save. What are the dangers here? The biggest danger to you is traffic. You want others to see you from a long distance, so they have adequate time to slow down and/ or stop. You can start that process by putting on your emergency flashers, but a better alternative is to put out warning triangles, with the first spaced 10 feet away from your vehicle toward oncoming traffic, the next one placed 100 feet away, and the third at 200 feet. If the weather is foggy or this incident happened during the day, consider using 30-minute road flares instead. I’ve found that with their 800-plus lumen intensity, they grab people’s attention much more readily than any other roadway device, short of a marked police car.