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For example, a Kansas City firefighter suffered severe leg trauma when a car collided with the fire truck he was driving, sending it into both a utility pole and a tree. The firefighter had to be extricated from the truck.
A Chicago Fire Department engine was running lights and sirens to a call when a school bus collided with it. The truck was flipped on its side, killing one firefighter and injuring three others.
In California, a fire truck was traveling slow on the side of the highway searching for a car that went off the road when it was slammed from behind by a concrete truck traveling about 60 mph. Five firefighters were hurt, three with head and face injuries.
Newspapers are littered with reports like these of firefighters being killed or injured in fire-truck collisions. In fact, according to the National Fire Protection Association, in 2010 alone there were 4,380 injuries to firefighters responding to or returning from an incident.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency reports that each year about 25 percent of the firefighter on-duty deaths occur while going to or coming from an emergency call. Worse yet, vehicle crashes are second only to heart attacks as the leading cause of firefighter deaths.
Beyond the numbers
J.D. Travis knows a little something about collisions involving fire trucks. He is a 33-year veteran of the Dallas Fire Department who oversees, among other things, the fleet support operations for the city’s 57 fire stations.
“We’ve had our share of some major collisions over my career,” Travis says.
One such collision occurred at an intersection when a Bentley GT plowed into a fire truck, totaling both. Another collision occurred when a Ford Escort came through an intersection and T-boned a DFD truck. The little car functioned as a wedge and turned the truck on its side.
“In all that, we’ve never had a fatality or serious injury, which is a testament to Spartan’s product,” Travis says. He also knows that there’s been a good deal of luck involved and the potential is great to become one of those news stories and FEMA statistics.
New level of protection
“This new technology is outstanding because it will decrease that potential,” Travis says. “This will protect firefighters better in the event of a serious collision.”
The technology Travis is talking about is Spartan’s Advanced Protection System (APS) that just hit the market. It’s a sophisticated network of airbags, sensors, restraints and structural designs that will reduce the number of firefighter deaths and the severity of their injuries when a fire truck is involved in a collision. The APS is groundbreaking because many of its components are industry firsts.
Those industry firsts include outboard sensors that protect firefighters from multi-point collisions including side-impact airbag deployment, driver knee-protection airbags, full side-curtain airbags and an intelligent seat-belt system. Add these industry firsts to their already established safety features, and the industry has the safest fire truck on the market by far.
Many fire departments are using the roadway safety program that involves positioning a fire truck at an angle when working a motor vehicle crash scene to protect citizens and emergency response workers. This angled parking means that inattentive motorists are less likely to strike the rear of an apparatus and push it into rescue workers and more likely to deflect off of it back into the traffic lane. It also means that the fire truck is more exposed to side-impact collisions.
“We get ours hit on the side constantly,” Travis says. “After they’ve administered patient care, firefighters remain on scene waiting on the wrecker to remove the vehicle. If someone runs into them while they’re sitting in the cab waiting, the APS will have a big impact by containing the glass shards and other debris.”
Travis says the importance of added protection for firefighters in the back cab cannot be overstated. “What Spartan has done by going the extra steps to put in the over-sized airbags, side-curtain airbags, and concentrate on the back and entire cab coverage area is monumental,” he says.
Another incredibly innovative, and industry first, safety feature is the two airbags at the driver’s knees and two more on the officer’s side.
“With a custom built chassis, your steering column is right there,” Travis says. “And that dash panel, depending on the size of the driver and officer, is only six to eight inches from your knee. It doesn’t take much of an impact for your knee to hit that, even if you are seat belted in. I think that is tremendous added protection.”
This level of protection for firefighters, Travis says, is long overdue.
“You can’t buy a new automotive vehicle where airbags are not standard,” Travis says. “It is time for that level of protection in the fire service. I think APS is a tremendous enhancement for the fire service.”
As advances in PPE and SCBA have kept firefighters safer on the interior, Spartan’s Advanced Protection System will keep them safer en route.