An emergency on a live carriageway has a feature no other workplace shares: the hazard that caused it is still arriving, at speed, every few seconds, for as long as the incident lasts.

The traffic does not stop by itself

In most workplaces the first response is to attend to the casualty. On a live road, doing that without dealing with the traffic puts the responders in the position that just injured someone, and secondary collisions into an incident scene are a well-established pattern. Making the scene safe means getting traffic stopped or diverted before people gather, which usually means the emergency services rather than the crew.

Move away from the road, not along it

The instinct when something happens is to move toward the incident and along the carriageway. The correct direction is away from it: behind a barrier, onto a verge, up a bank, over a fence. That is the same escape route identified before work started, and its value is that it does not require anyone to make a decision in the moment. Rehearsing it briefly at the start of a shift costs a minute and removes the hesitation.

Location is the thing that delays help

A roadside location is genuinely hard to describe. Direction of travel matters as much as the road name, junction numbers and marker posts are precise where descriptions are not, and a caller who says only the road name has sent help to somewhere between two junctions. Establishing the exact location reference at the start of the shift, and having it written where anyone can read it out, saves minutes at the point they are most valuable.

Account for everyone before anything else

A linear works spreads people over a long distance, often out of sight of each other and behind plant noise. Knowing who is on site, and having a way to account for them that does not depend on shouting, is what tells you whether anyone is unaccounted for in the carriageway. That question has to be answerable quickly, because the answer determines whether traffic has to be stopped immediately.

Getting the casualty away from the traffic

Where someone is injured in a position still exposed to traffic, the judgement is between the harm of moving them and the harm of leaving them in the path of the next vehicle. On a live carriageway that balance usually favours moving them clear, which is the opposite of the normal advice. Making that decision in advance, as part of the plan, is better than making it while standing over someone.

For the routes this depends on, see planning for vehicle incursion. For the lone-worker version of the same problem, see lone working and roadside patrols.

Related standards

The standards below set the classification, testing and performance requirements behind the equipment used for this work.

• EN ISO 20471 — High-Visibility Clothing
• EN 397 — Industrial Safety Helmets
• EN 352 — Hearing Protectors

Frequently asked questions