1. Economic Impact of an Incident In Highway Scene Management

2. Economic Impact of an Incident It’s not simply an inconvenience…it’s a serious injury to the economy at large. We don’t own this picture; we need one like it.

3. Economic Impact of an Incident Delay = $$$ Goal is safe resumption of traffic flow

4. Economic Impact of an Incident Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Annual loss of 1.3 billion vehicle-hours due to incident congestion Nearly $10 billion loss to the national economy Costs are: Direct – occurring from the collision and the resulting injuries or fatalities Indirect – total, long-term cost to society Affects: victims off the primary incident and any First Responders involved in a secondary incident

5. Economic Impact of an Incident Costs to Society are wide-ranging *: Property Damage – value of vehicles, cargo, roadways, negative impact on freight movement, adjacent property, and items damaged in the incident Medical cost – immediate, follow-up, and sometimes life-long treatment Emergency services cost – police, EMS, and fire dept. response to the original incident, and to secondary incident(s), which costs are often higher. Investigation cost – time investigating, writing reports for primary and secondary incidents; costs increase exponentially if fatalities Legal cost – fees, court costs, overtime costs from resulting civil litigation *source: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/fa_330.pdf

6. Economic Impact of an Incident Costs to Society (cont’d.): Vocational rehabilitation – cost of retraining due to disability caused by injuries resulting from primary or secondary incident Replacement employees – temporary workers hired while injured workers recover following the primary or secondary incident Disability/Retirement income – accrue when workers, including First Responders, cannot resume employment Market productivity reduction – wages and benefits lost to the economy over the victim’s remaining lifespan Environmental costs – due to the pollution cloud created from idling vehicles in the queue behind the incident

7. Economic Impact of an Incident Costs to Society (cont’d.): Insurance administration – costs associated with processing insurance claims and attorney fees Travel delay – costs to persons not directly involved in incident; dollar costs, but also missed weddings, graduations, delayed emergency visits to hospital for heart attack victims or expectant mothers Psychological impact – cost of emotional trauma from incident Functional capacity – long-term changes in a person’s ability to function on a day-to-day basis New operational costs – costs of developing new procedures and training to improve responses at future incidents

8. Economic Impact of an Incident Secondary incidents can result from primary incidents Probability of secondary collisions increases the longer traffic is blocked Usually more severe: moving vehicle striking stopped vehicles account for majority of firefighter struck-by incidents (FHWA) nearly 18 percent of all traffic fatalities nationwide (DOT)

9. Economic Impact of an Incident Many resources required to “return to normal” Additional law enforcement personnel Average cost of interstate blockage due to incident $ 200,000 per lane per hour Recovery time: 4 minutes for every 1 minute a lane is blocked Costs increase with the length of delay Goal is the safe resumption of traffic flow as quickly as prudent

10. Economic Impact of an Incident Any investigating officer with concurrence of NCDOT: May immediately remove or have removed Any wrecked, abandoned, disabled, unattended, or burned vehicle/cargo/or personal property Interfering with the regular flow of traffic Without liability for property removal.

11. Summary