Traffic incident response practices in Europe : results of an American scan trip.

In April 2005, a team of twelve incident response specialists from the United States visited four European countries to assess and evaluate various practices for responding to incidents. During this trip, they heard numerous presentations about incident response practices in all four countries from a wide variety of perspectives, including road authorities, fire departments, police agencies, medical services, automobile clubs, recovery providers, and other groups. The information obtained during the trip identified several areas where practices in the United States have the potential to be improved. This paper provides a preliminary description of the findings and offers some preliminary recommendations of the team based on team discussion at the end of the trip, but prior to the preparation of the official report. The preliminary findings and recommendations will be reviewed and revised during the summer and early fall 2005, and will be published in a report late in the year. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E213531.