Should crash attenuation trucks be required at crash scenes?

[cpzilliacus]

TheLocal.se: Rush-hour crashes as snow falls in Sweden

The storyline here is not especially interesting (it does snow in Sweden in February), but the image in this story could be of interest.  A truck with a crash attenuator (or "crash cushion") on the back is protecting the crash scene on a motorway, complete with an arrow board, a suggested speed limit (70 km/h is about 45 MPH) and a triangle says ACCIDENT.

Should this type of setup be required on U.S. and Canadian freeway and expressway-class roads at the scene of a crash?

Full disclosure:  This also posted to the FreewayJim Facebook group.

[ekt8750]

PennDOT, PTC, NJDOT and NJTA all have help trucks that are equipped with arrow boards and the like to alert drivers of either a disabled vehicle or an accident scene. I'm sure there's other states that do the same.

[jeffandnicole]

Personally, I don't think crash attenuation trucks are necessary.  I'm just going by some raw numbers for New Jersey, but per their records for 2013, there were 13,514 on NJ's Interstate Highway System (which doesn't include the Turnpike, Parkway or Expressway), which averages out to about 37 crashes per day.   Many of these accidents are quickly attended to and taken care of by a single state trooper, with no involvement by towing companies or EMTs.  Per the records, fewer than 25% of the accidents had any sort of injury recorded.   Only 40 accidents involved a fatality.

In accidents on highways, police, fire, maintenance and other equipment are used in a manor to protect everyone at the scene already.  Traffic often has to slow down, either from gawking at the accident or because a lane is closed.  In cases where secondary accidents have occurred, it's not always a car just speeding down the lane running into the rear of another vehicle.  Many times, these cars have somehow skidded or turned out of the travel lanes at an angle into the accident scene, in which case an annenuater truck would have done no good in further protecting the scene.

Also, the annenuater trucks are designed based on the speed limit of the road.  For most highways, a 'scorpion' is needed on highways greater than 55 mph, for example.  This is an additional cost to the many towing companies contracted to handle accident scenes on highways; one that they probably don't want to bear, as not only it's another truck to keep ready, but also another employee who has to sit around waiting for what is ultimately a rare phone call.  And as far as a 'special' speed limit on the truck, it's meaningless.  Motorists aren't going to suddenly slow down because of such a speed if they're already flying by an accident scene...in fact, it's probably unsafe to suddenly slam on the brakes at that point anyway, if they haven't slowed down already.

[Jardine]

Would crash attenuation trucks be dispatched to locations where motorists have struck a prior attenuation truck ?

And if so, when does it stop ?

[cpzilliacus]

Would crash attenuation trucks be dispatched to locations where motorists have struck a prior attenuation truck ?

And if so, when does it stop ?

One way to answer that is to have all freeway service patrol trucks that are not wreckers equipped with an attenuator.

[steviep24]

NYSDOT uses crash attenuation trucks at work zones, mainly if they're striping a road or doing pothole repair. I've never seen one at an accident scene.