From TowTimes.com - Who Should Take the Training?

[TowBot]

Photo Credit: Foto Sushi

I’m hoping most towers have heard of SHRP2 (Strategic Highway Research Program), which is a Traffic Incident Management (TIM) training program offered by the Federal Highway Administration in partnership with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

The program’s goal is to improve traffic incident responder safety and offer a unified team approach to clear roads faster and reduce congestion. It’s a national curriculum to build a team of well-trained responders that work together from the moment the first emergency call is made to final scene clearance.

The training brings together police, firefighters, emergency medical personnel, state and local transportation agencies, towing and other incident responders.

I challenge anyone in the towing and recovery industry to get this training. You’ll have a better understanding of what other responders do to safely and quickly respond to, resolve and safely exit an incident scene.

According to the National Traffic Incident Management Responder Training Program, as of January 2019, the number of those who have been trained in the towing and recovery sector is 34,872, which is only 9 percent of all towers. As an industry, we need to aggressively increase this number.

My husband and I sponsored a classroom training session at our shop and I found it to be well worth my time to learn about TIM best practices such as safe vehicle positioning, telecommunications and TIM fundamentals and terminology.

There is no cost —  this training is free. All that’s needed is four hours of your time to attend a session, or you can take online training and complete the modules on your schedule. For more information about training opportunities in your region contact TIMTraining@dot.gov.

Can’t get away for four hours? To register for the free National Highway Institute TIM online training go to the National Highway Institute’s webpage at nhi.fhwa.dot.gov.

Main point: Take the time to get trained. Help improve safety to save lives at traffic incidents.

View the full article and more on TowTimes.com

[rreschran]

All towers should have TIM training for obvious reasons, but also to have that coveted certificate in their personnel/training file when it comes time to defend a driver and the company against civil lawsuit. A recent high-dollar California lawsuit was based on a tow operator's training as a Freeway Service Patrol operator being sued. His training was heavily attacked, but the tower had FSP, CHP, and current TIM training to uphold his experience. Four-hours time to complete FREE training is chump change to a multi-million dollar lawsuit. And, yes, I am a TIM instructor in California.     R. 

[ESC]

18 hours ago, rreschran said:

All towers should have TIM training for obvious reasons, but also to have that coveted certificate in their personnel/training file when it comes time to defend a driver and the company against civil lawsuit. A recent high-dollar California lawsuit was based on a tow operator's training as a Freeway Service Patrol operator being sued. His training was heavily attacked, but the tower had FSP, CHP, and current TIM training to uphold his experience. Four-hours time to complete FREE training is chump change to a multi-million dollar lawsuit. And, yes, I am a TIM instructor in California.     R. 

A few of us sat through a basic training with Jack Sullivan years ago, but we have our full crew going to a class on June 3 at a local fire department hosted by Todd Leiss.... looking forward to having all of our guys certified and updated.   Best of all, it is free... so there is no excuse not to attend.