Louisiana State Police And DOTD Announce New Traffic Program

The Louisiana State Police is teaming up with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development for a new statewide Traffic Incident Management system.

TIM is aimed at keeping roadways safe for all drivers. They will be working together to deal with all traffic incidents, and to get them cleared away from roadways as fastest as possible.

They will handle:

Traffic crashes
Stalled vehicles
Spilled cargo
Anything that impedes the flow of traffic

The program will train all people responding to traffic incidents to quickly detect the problem and deal with it.

They will train:

Law enforcement
Fire department workers
EMS
Towing operators

They plan to emphasize safety and how to limit the time first responders' time at crash scenes which they hope will reduce the number of secondary fatal and injuries that happened because of the first crash.

State Police commander Colonel Mike Edmonson says,

"By implementing this type of traffic management system, our primary goal is to improve the safety of the general public, as well as, the incident responders who mitigate traffic scenes. We also hope to provide more accurate information to the public which will enable them to make informed decisions on utilizing alternate routes. The system's outcome should also reduce the time frame of roadway closures and disruptions."

DOTD Secretary Sherri H. LeBas says,

"At DOTD, and with our partners here, the No. 1 goal is safety. This program and the training involved will help ensure that responders operate in a consistent and safe manner. This training will help everyone responding to an incident work together as a team and will help decrease the number of secondary crashes that happen as a result of the initial incident."

Louisiana State Fire Marshal Chief H. Butch Browning says,

"This project is important to the firefighters of this state as we know the importance of quick response times to save lives and also to prevent incidents. We are proud partners in this effort."

TIM is a national program being pushed by the Federal Highway Administration. The goal is to train over 50,000 incident responders by December 2014.

Thirty-three states have already implemented the program.