Highways Agency

3. A Better Understanding of Incident Management

3.1 Incident Types and Performance Data

The starting point for any interpretation of what actually happens during incident management is an understanding of the general time line of activities and the roles and responsibilities that those involved perform. A clear message from the workshops however was that no two major incidents are ever, or very rarely, the same and that an endless number of consequences may take place depending on local circumstances. Many factors affect the characteristics of an incident including:

• Its location. For example does the incident occur on a dual carriageway, on a long stretch of rural motorway, an urban motorway at an intersection, in a grid system (e.g. the Birmingham Box).
• The characteristics of the event. These can range from dealing with unlit vehicles on the hardshoulder, minor debris clearance, broken down vehicles in moving lanes, simple collision with no injuries, to multiple collisions, collisions of large vehicles, fires, spillages and so on.
• Attending personnel. These may vary and may include local police, traffic police, fire and rescue service, ambulance service, HA's road marshals, term contractors and Highways Agency staff, vehicle recovery specialists, local government officials, Environment Agency staff and occasionally still other experts.
• Availability of resources and personnel to manage the incident which may vary over time, by location and organisation.
• Weather conditions.
• Time of day/year.
• Contractual arrangements.

It is also worth noting that most incidents are minor and require police attendance only. It is reported that fire and rescue services (FRS) attend 3% of all incidents and the ambulance service somewhat less. In one county, this may equate to less than 10 RTI's (road traffic incidents) per month for FRS. Much analysis concentrates on the 3% of major incidents.

Research work for the former Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions identified generic incident frequencies and durations by incident type in order to identify economic benefits resulting from road improvements using software called INCA (INcident Cost benefit Assessment). The amount of time lost per year at different flows measured in AADT (Annual Average Daily Traffic) can be calculated using INCA depending on the flow in each flow group, percentage HGV and lane capacities. Using default values in INCA, Figure 2 provides an indication of 'lost' time (vehicle hours) per year on a 1km stretch of motorway for different types of incident and for different flow ranges.

Subsequent work undertaken on behalf of HA on specific routes indicates that the assumptions in INCA concerning incident frequency and durations for a road with a hardshoulder (motorway) are of the right order of magnitude accepting the problems alluded to above concerning incident definition.

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It is worth noting here that no systemised or standardised method of incident reporting is available across the UK and that, thus far, reporting of incident frequencies and durations has been undertaken on an ad-hoc basis to address specific issues. This involves an assessment of police (detailed) or vehicle recovery organisations (far less detailed) records to evaluate the performance of e.g. new signing systems, assess new methods of dealing with minor breakdown clearance (HA's Minuteman) or providing a basis for calculating the algorithms in INCA. In some cases, incident reports are only maintained for a year and then discarded by the holding authority. The motoring organisations also maintain incident data which can be used by members to help plan journeys e.g. via the internet and which can also be used to provide regional and global summaries of incident numbers (as reported) and to identify listings of 'hot-spot' locations.

3.2 Roles and Responsibilities

While there are common elements in many 'clearance' tasks, no two such tasks are the same. Accepting this however a generic timeline is presented as Figure 3. This attempts to combine and simplify the various timeline of activities identified by the participants at the workshops for a range of sample incidents. These involve major incidents of the type presented to workshop participants where attendant emergency services would be involved.

Typically, for the larger scale incidents discussed at the workshops, the following are key participants:

Incident Clearance Accident investigations following fatal incidents can take some time to perform. Specialist equipment is available on the market and it is claimed that this is capable of significantly reducing this time. Specialist heavy lifting equipment is available on the market capable of significantly reducing the time taken to right overturned HGVs. Motorists' information It is vital to get accurate and timely information out to the motoring public in areas a long distance upstream of an incident. There are many media outlets of information to the public, with a variety of methods for obtaining the information to output and the quality of that information.

The Police:

The police are often the first to receive notice of an incident (as receiver of '999' calls) or the first to detect incidents because of their role in traffic patrol and traffic law enforcement. They are typically in command at the scene, request additional services, and lead crash investigations when the incident results in personal injuries, fatalities, or significant property damage. The police have the key role in incident management and associated tasks which are described in more detail in the next section.

Fire and Rescue Services:

These include county or city fire and rescue organisations. They respond to incidents involving fire, hazardous materials, medical emergencies, life support or rescue, and thus play an important role in incident management. Fire and rescue services do not have a statutory duty to attend motor vehicle accidents but do enjoy statutory 'control' powers at a 'fire ground'.

Ambulance and Paramedic Services:

These provide an essential service to those injured in road traffic accidents. Typically their involvement is at the early stages of a major incident and they have left the scene well before the road is reopened to traffic.

Transportation Agencies:

These include departments of transportation and other agencies that operate and maintain the road network. The Highways Agency is responsible for the trunk road network whilst responsibility is given to local highway authorities on non-trunk roads. Clearly incidents occurring on trunk roads have wider impacts than on the trunk road link itself and representatives from both attended the workshops. HA's trunk road network is divided up into a series of Areas which are managed on a contractual basis by maintenance and contractor agents. These agencies generally provide traffic management support, incident information dissemination to other impacted organisations, equipment and personnel for incident clearance, special signing, maintenance of sign 'dumps', activation of detours, containment of minor hazardous material spills, debris removal and related activities.

Hazardous Materials Cleanup Services:

These services are generally provided by specialist companies such as BIFFA. Significant spills may involve not only the HAZMAT service but also related environmental protection authorities from the Environment Agency.

Towing and Recovery Companies:

These are private companies that provide towing and recovery services for highway incidents. They are often under contract to one of the agencies involved in incident management, may independently patrol the highway, or be contracted by the motorist. Specialist recovery resources, such as heavy lift or rotator vehicles, are usually privately contracted by an involved agency.

Information and Private Traveller Information Providers:

These include public agencies and private companies such as information service providers that collect, process and disseminate traffic and transport related information to benefit travellers. Common methods to disseminate information are television, radio, the Internet, highway advisory radio, and variable message signing.

The magnitude or nature of an incident may require other organisations to respond or participate in incident management on an as-needed basis.

The workshops brought into sharp focus the differences in work culture between the different organisations. In particular:

• Some organisations operate round-the-clock and are response-orientated while others are not.
• Police officers are trained to act autonomously as well as with others, assume command, and make unilateral decisions, whereas fire and rescue personnel act in teams.
• Private sector organisations, like towing companies, are profit-driven and therefore very mindful of the amount of time they are involved and the resources they apply.
• Media often view an incident primarily for its relative newsworthiness and may not give adequate consideration to additional information from which travellers could benefit.

No single organisation is statutorily responsible for incident management in a holistic sense although the police do enjoy primacy at the scene. Each plays its own part. Initiatives pursued by the HA such as new Rapid Response Vehicles (e.g. Area 10, Area 8) and Minuteman (A1, A63) also bring into sharper focus the roles and responsibilities played by each, as does the advent of new road management systems such as MDIS (Midlands Driver Information System) and the TCC (Traffic Control Centre).

The following identify the phasing of a large incident though again, the precise details of each will vary greatly depending on local circumstances:

• Detection and verification is the process by which emergency services become aware of the incident on the road network.
• Response is the mechanism by which emergency services are deployed. Response times are set for both emergency and non-emergency organisations involved in incident clearance but these can vary from organisation to organisation and from area to area and depend on time of day / day of week. The personnel and equipment requirements are left up to the organisations themselves to judge.
• Site management is the management of equipment and personnel on site to deal as effectively as possible with the incident. The initial assessment of an incident is a very difficult and stressful task and requires adequate experience and training. In particular, the Traffic Police are responsible for managing the site and in creating a transient micro-infrastructure and communication framework at the site of an incident.
• Traffic management is the setting up of traffic control measures to ensure the safety of those managing the incident together with the setting up of diversion routes to get traffic away from the incident.
• Incident clearance is the clearing away of vehicles, spillages and other items before the lane/road can be re-opened to traffic.
• Motorists' information is the communication of incident information and diversion routes to other motorists to enable them to avoid the vicinity of the incident.

3.3 Key Issues

Introduction

A number of key issues arose out of the workshops and these are described below. As well as the key issues, a lot of factual information was provided at the workshops which helped to provide a much better understanding of the complexity of incidents and what actually goes on in terms of the lines of communication and actions taken by key participants. This information is provided in Appendix B - Part 1 along with a list of target response rates and incident frequencies (anecdotal) in Part 2.

Roles and responsibilities

There is a lack of definition about the roles and responsibilities of each of the participants involved in incident management and a lack of national guidelines and procedures for incident management. It was stressed at all of the workshops that cross-organisational training and debrief sessions would help to clarify roles and responsibilities and highlight areas for improvement. At the moment, many organisations do not have practice exercises and very few organisations hold even in-house debrief sessions. Contingency planning was an issue raised at two of the workshops, with the suggestion that set procedures for dealing with different incidents in different areas could be developed and combined with tabletop exercises.

Non-hazardous spillages may be the responsibility of the term maintenance contractor or the vehicle recovery agent, but it is not clear which organisation has responsibility for clearing up medical waste. Similarly, it is not clear who has responsibility for holding and maintaining drainage plans that would show the location of balancing ponds and other pollution control measures. At the workshops it was stated that on occasions the Environment Agency has the plans but the Highways Agency does not. At other times, the Environment Agency may have to buy them from third party consultants.

Training

Some of the representatives at the workshops, and those interviewed individually, felt that training to undertake site management tasks was inadequate. This was substantiated by earlier interviews. The incident scene can be a complex and dangerous environment. It exposes both victims and those responding to the incident to any combination of fast moving traffic, hazardous materials, fire and electrical hazards, damaged vehicles and stressful weather conditions. With the advent of the Emergency Response Units or Teams, there is the possibility that these services may be the first on the scene. There was concern that the personnel manning these vehicles might not be trained to make the initial assessments, or to cope with severely injured casualties. The priority for the emergency services is to preserve life. The police do not advise any of the emergency services to attend to casualties; vehicle fires or spillages until temporary emergency road or lane closures and signing are in place because of the risk to personnel from passing traffic. In North Yorkshire, where the police resources were considered to be severely constrained, it can often be the case that road closures and signing may not be dealt with promptly and efficiently and only consist of a police vehicle placed in the fend-off position. If there is only one officer on the scene he cannot perform the initial assessment and set up cones and signs simultaneously on his own.

Pinpointing the location

The majority of incidents are brought to the attention of the emergency services by means of telephone calls made by the travelling public, either via the emergency roadside telephones (ERT's) or by personal mobile cell-phones. Calls received via the ERTs are linked to the referencing system by which the location of the ERT is determined. The location of the ERT will then provide the emergency services with information about the road and the carriageway affected by the incident. Calls received via personal mobile phones, however, are not linked to any location referencing system that the emergency services are able to access. Therefore detailed information about the road and carriageway affected by the incident will have to be extracted from the caller.

People often do not keep track of their location to the level of detail the emergency services require. The problem is worse on motorways than all-purpose dual carriageways because link lengths are generally longer, often featureless and junctions further apart. Delegates at one workshop estimated that up to 10% of calls received by British Telecom on the '999' number from a mobile phone were directed to the wrong area's Control Room. The public is generally unaware of the road marker system - the Control Room often has to explain what the marker posts are to the caller so that the reference post can then be identified by the caller. The problem can be eased or compounded by the proliferation of calls from mobile phones which can either verify or conflict with the location given by the first caller.

Boundary problems

The contractual arrangements for the managing agents and term maintenance contractors from one Highways Agency Area may preclude their involvement in another adjacent area, even if their resources are the closest to the scene. This can cause considerable delays to incident clearance particularly if the managing agent / term maintenance contractor needs confirmation from the Highways Agency that the loan of equipment/resources will not lead to failure in meeting their own performance targets.

As well as ensuring the appropriate response time, organisations need to ensure that they provide the appropriate response in terms of personnel and equipment. Most of the organisations involved in incident clearance do not follow the same boundaries as the emergency services which themselves may follow slightly different boundaries or cover more than one county. Resources may often be needed in other areas than the police boundary in which an incident has occurred and allowance needs to be made for this fact to provide the non-emergency services additional time to gather the appropriate personnel and equipment. Hence, the earlier these organisations are informed of the incident, the more likely it is that they will be able to supply the required resources efficiently when needed on site.

Too many cooks!

Conversely, there is no need for these services to actually be on site during the emergency phase of an incident - this could result in scene congestion, and in any case the requirements from that service at the scene could change during the course of the incident and different or additional personnel and equipment may be needed. This is a conflict that all of the workshops highlighted as a major problem and one which needs resolution if incident clearance is to improve. There is also the risk of the dilution of the quality of information if there is a long communication chain to the people who need that information.

Accessing the site

For the emergency services, all will use the hardshoulder, where provided, to reach the scene of an incident. Where there is no hardshoulder, most will try to part the traffic in the middle of the running lanes. Non-emergency services do not carry blue lights on their vehicles. All of the workshops have identified this fact as a problem when trying to reach the scene where no hardshoulder is present. In cases where there is narrow or no hardshoulder, the non-blue light vehicles will have to try to 'battle' through the tailback to get to the incident, especially if a police escort is not available - the orange / yellow lights do not infer an emergency situation and the traffic will often not make way for these vehicles. Non-emergency service drivers do not generally undergo emergency driving training, which could make driving through congested traffic more dangerous.

Ownership

Ownership of the scene was an issue raised - the senior police officer present is in charge of the incident, but it is not always clear to the non-emergency services exactly who that person is. The enhancement of the role of Incident Commander, who remains on the scene throughout, was suggested though others questioned the practicality of such a role. This would be somebody who has the responsibilities of organising police escorts for non-emergency services, liaising with all the organisations regarding the scene requirements and acting as one point of contact, at the scene, that people can use to keep up to date with the incident progress. Sometimes communicating between the emergency services at the scene can be difficult as they all operate different communication systems, and so even when two representatives may be 500 metres apart, communications between them may have to go through the control rooms.

Finding out about the ownership of the road was also raised as an issue at the workshops. This can take a long time, especially where trunk roads are being de-trunked, or where there is boundary confusion. The police control room needs to identify the correct organisation in order that road closures/diversions etc. can be implemented. There can be boundary confusion at the borders between the roads that form part of the Highways Agency responsibility and roads that form part of the local authority responsibility. Motorways and slip roads are the responsibility of the Highways Agency whilst roads passing under or over the motorways may be the responsibility of the Local Authority. There are certain junctions on the motorway network, which form the boundary of many Highways Agency areas. For example, Junction 24 of the M1 links the M1 with the A50, the A453 and the A6. The M1 north of Junction 24 falls into Area 14, the M1 south of Junction 24, and the A6, fall into Area 11, the A453 is in Area 7 and the M50 is a DBFO road covering Area 28. Also, contractual arrangements for trunk road maintenance change every 5 years or so which can in turn lead to further confusion and 'settling-in' periods when new management systems are introduced.

Diversion Routes

Diversion routes can take a considerable amount of time to set up by hand, and the initial planning and consultative phase between the police, the managing agent and the local authority as to the route for the diversion can also be quite time consuming. In some parts of the country, strategic diversion routes are planned or are already in operation, whereby permanent diversion symbol signing is set up and all that is required for the diversion is to place signing at the beginning of the diversion. Planning diversions off motorways where there is an adjacent A-road that was the main route before the motorway was built is generally quite straightforward. Diversions off dual carriageways and other motorways can be more difficult. For example, the infrastructure in North Yorkshire was considered to be relatively sparse and if incidents affect both the A1 and the A19, planned or unplanned, there are no other roads in the county capable of taking the traffic and extreme congestion results.

Vehicle Recovery

Lorries:

The vehicle recovery agents present at the workshops have stressed the importance of their early presence at the scene to professionally assess requirements. For example the specialist vehicle recovery agent at the scenes may decide that it is necessary to close the opposite carriageway to upright a HGV, as they would need to put vehicles on both sides of the HGV to stop it from rolling right over again. If the decision to close the opposite carriageway is left to the latter part of the incident, the resources required to undertake this task may have left the scene and there would be additional delay to clearance. There is new specialist heavy lifting equipment available that enables very rapid vehicle recovery called rotator systems, but these are very expensive (about £200,000) and consequently there are only 4 to 5 of these in use throughout the country.

Contractual agreements can impact on operational decision making e.g. specialist equipment must be paid for whether or not it is actually used at the site. The vehicle recovery company can not however recover the operating cost of the vehicle if it is not used on the scene.

Light vehicles:

A proportion of the recovery work undertaken by an operator may be unpaid. When the vehicle recovery agents remove a vehicle from the scene, as they are required to do in order to remain on the list of approved operators; they have to try to recover the costs from the owner of the vehicle. As the vehicle recovery agents deal with the car owners who are not members of the AA, RAC or other such organisations, they are more likely to not be able to afford to pay for the recovery of their vehicle. In addition to the recovery of vehicles involved in incidents, the recovery agents are also required to remove abandoned vehicles, for which the owners can often not be traced, and are therefore also non-paying jobs. The recovery agents often have to pay an administration fee of between £12 to £15 per call-out in order to remain on the list of approved operators, for both police contracts and AA contracts for vehicle recovery. This fee also has to be recovered from the owner of the vehicle, or borne by the recovery agent. It has been expressed that these mounting costs will lead to the reduction in the number of vehicle recovery agents, and in the quality of service that can be afforded. It will also be likely that very few recovery agents will be able to afford the new heavy lifting equipment that could help to speed up incident clearance significantly.

Motorists' Information

The workshops have indicated that it is vital to get accurate information output by the media in areas a long distance upstream of the incident. This would benefit both the motorists and the organisations involved in incident clearance, because the motorists would not get caught up in the traffic queue, making it easier for the incident clearance teams to reach the incident. It is apparent that a lot of harm can be done when inaccurate information discredits the system - if a matrix sign displays a 40mph speed limit when an incident has been long cleared, motorists are more likely to ignore speed limit signs in the future.

Very few of the outlets for information cover the period in which the incident has been cleared though, and so motorists may believe that there are still delays and divert down less suitable roads, when in fact the motorway may be clear.

It was suggested that if motorists see a variable message sign informing them of major delays up ahead, 30% of them will divert, and if they hear an announcement on the radio 30% of them will divert, but if they see a variable message sign and hear an announcement, 70% of them will divert. The importance of getting accurate and timely information out to the public was stressed at all of the workshops, yet the task of informing the media comes quite far down on the task list.

Summary of Key Issues / Problems

• Detection and Verification.
• The motoring public increasingly uses mobile phones rather than the emergency roadside telephones to report an incident.
• The motoring public is largely unaware of the marker post system and is often unable to accurately identify their location.
• Delays in the identification of the correct location of an incident put casualties at greater risk by diverting emergency service resources to incorrect locations.
• Delays in the identification of the correct location of an incident adds to the overall incident duration as a result of a knock-on effect: it is suggested that it may take one minute for the build-up of one mile of tailback and one hour for each mile of tailback to disperse once the incident has been cleared.

Response

• Response times vary between organisations and between different days of the week / time of day.
• Many non-emergency service personnel may be on standby at their homes and not in the depots out of office hours.
• It is suggested that there is a severe lack of specialist Accident Investigators on duty in some parts of the country and so it can take up to an hour for them to attend a scene when being called out from home.
• The managing agents and the term maintenance contractors are the only organisations involved in incident management that will not, as a matter of course, attend incidents outside their jurisdiction, even if they are the closest.
• There are a variety of different contracts between the police and vehicle recovery agents, and a variety of response times within those contracts.
• Determining exactly what equipment and personnel are required at the scene from a remote position is difficult for many of the non-emergency services.
• Non-emergency services often find it difficult reaching the scene of an incident when having to 'battle' through the tailback as non-blue light vehicles.

Site Management

• The initial assessment of an incident is a difficult and stressful task for the police, and one for which there is an apparent lack of training. Most incident management training comes from on-the-job experiences.
• Incident management is a divergent process that requires a wide range of abilities and experience that non-Traffic Police Units may not possess to the same level of expertise.
• Identifying ownership of the road on which an incident has taken place is sometimes an issue. There are certain areas of the motorway and trunk road network that form the boundary between 4 different Highways Agency areas.
• The welfare of people stuck in the tailback must be a consideration during long duration incidents.
• There are few access points to water along the motorway and trunk road network, so the process of extinguishing a large fire will involve shuttle running of appliances to a source of water.
• There is a lack of definition about the roles and responsibilities of the different organisations involved in incident management, and a lack of national guidelines and procedures. Cross-organisation training, contingency planning and debrief sessions may help clarify some of these issues.
• It is not always clear to the non-emergency services exactly which individual is in command of an incident.
• Some incidents are attended only by the police and are cleared within 20 or 30 minutes.

Traffic Management

• The emergency services are only able to set up a limited amount of temporary traffic control measures.
• The planning and setting up of diversion routes can be a time consuming process and divert essential resources from clearing the scene to managing the diversion. Strategic diversion routes can remove both the planning and most of the setting up phases, if suitable infrastructure is available.
• Motorists should be able to follow symbol signed diversion routes to avoid the area of an incident, ITS initiatives such as MDIS and TCC can help to do this. Incident Clearance
• Accident investigations following fatal incidents can take some time to perform. Specialist equipment is available on the market and it is claimed that this is capable of significantly reducing this time.
• Specialist heavy lifting equipment is available on the market capable of significantly reducing the time taken to right overturned HGVs. Motorists' Information
• It is vital to get accurate and timely information out to the motoring public in areas a long distance upstream of an incident.
• There are many media outlets of information to the public, with a variety of methods for obtaining the information to output and the quality of that information.

Incident Clearance

• Accident investigations following fatal incidents can take some time to perform. Specialist equipment is available on the market and it is claimed that this is capable of significantly reducing this time.
• Specialist heavy lifting equipment is available on the market capable of significantly reducing the time taken to right overturned HGVs.

Motorists' information

• It is vital to get accurate and timely information out to the motoring public in areas a long distance upstream of an incident.
• There are many media outlets of information to the public, with a variety of methods for obtaining the information to output and the quality of that information.

3.4 Ideas generated by the Workshops

Participants at the workshops were encouraged to contribute with their own ideas during group discussion about what measures might be introduced to help ameliorate and resolve some of the above issues. These fell broadly under three headings i.e. operational improvements, technological improvements and training. These are summarised under the same headings as above and classified according to type of measure. Shorter-term operational measures are identified in blue.

Detection and verification

• Use technology to pinpoint the location of an incident reported by a mobile phone through the cell in which the phone is connected. (Tech).
• Utilise GPS technology in mobile phones to provide the police with accurate location information. (Tech).
• Greater use of incident detection technology to identify where traffic has come to a standstill. (Tech).
• Increase CCTV coverage to the whole motorway network. (Tech/Op).
• There should be larger and more frequently located signs every 2km to identify the road number, the direction of travel and the chainage, in a similar fashion to the motorways in France and the U.S.A. (Op).
• There should be signing / naming of bridges and other physical features. (Op).
• Emergency roadside telephones should be larger and the reference numbers be more conspicuous. (Op).
• There should be a national advertising campaign to educate the public about the presence and use of marker posts and in the reporting of incidents when using a mobile phone. (Op).
• Additional training is required for call handlers (Train).
• The location of major drainage items should be made available to emergency services as well as term maintenance contractors so that action may be taken to contain spillages. (Tech/Op).

Response

• Provide different coloured flashing lights for all non-emergency services to make them recognisable as incident response vehicles (Tech/Op).
• Have web-cams at the scene distributing information to the control rooms for all services to enable a better judgement of resource requirements. (Tech).
• Improve methods for information retrieval and dissemination for control room operatives. (Tech/Op).
• Have one central joint control room so that all agencies receive the same information at the same time and there can be one co-ordinated response. (Tech/Op).
• Emergency support units should operate 24-hours a day, 7 days a week with consistent aims and objectives. (Op).
• Term maintenance contractors need tighter agreements with increased penalties if they do not respond with appropriate and adequate resources and trained personnel. (Op).
• The police should request the presence of the term maintenance contractor as soon as the need becomes apparent. (Op/Train).

Site Management

• Using radio or mobile telephones some form of incident communications net be established that allows those responsible for managing the incident to communicate directly and without difficulty without going through multiple third parties. (Tech).
• Nationally standardised protocols and procedures for incident management. (Op).
• Better identification of whom is in charge at the scene e.g. using different coloured armbands. (Op).
• There should be a joint services contingency plan with joint training at all levels and a definition of core roles and responsibilities. (Train).
• Simulation training should be made available to all new recruits as an ongoing continuous program. (Train).
• Training should reflect real-life - lots of minor incidents not just major incidents. (Train).
• There needs to be adequate training for those who make initial and specialist assessments. (Train).
• All traffic units or other selected units should carry easy to use high quality camera equipment with characteristics/equipment that facilitate the accurate gauging of size and distance. (Tech/Op).
• Some means of gathering statements rapidly. This is a very time-consuming activity (Tech).
• There should be specialist police units for motorways and trunk roads with specialist units for dealing with non-core police activities e.g. highway authority patrols. (Op).
• Have a minute-taker on the scene recording information about the progression of an incident. (Op).
• Someone needs to be made accountable for events relating to the clearance of an incident. (Op).
• Multi-agency debrief sessions should be held, with flexibility for staff to attend. (Op).

Traffic Management

• Improve liaison between the police / managing agents and the local authorities to agree upon the best diversion routes and to help set them up and publicise them. (Op).
• Trafficmaster should be used to aid and advertise diversion routes. (Tech).

Incident Clearance

• Use task lists to ensure a methodical approach to incident clearance. (Train/Op).
• There should be black boxes installed in vehicles to aid accident investigation. (Tech).
• The number of trained accident investigators should be increased. (Op).
• The communication chain to the term maintenance contractors needs to be shortened. (Op).
• Attendance at the scene by professionals is required to assess properly the requirements for non-emergency services. (Train/Op).
• Regular updates on progress for non-emergency services is required, not just letting them rely on the initial report. (Op).

Motorists Information

• There should be a single 24-hour national radio travel coverage system. (Tech).
• Cats eyes in the roads should have the ability to flash or change colour to warn of standing traffic. (Tech).

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