COUNTERMEASURE
Objective: To prevent accidents during emergency situations by anticipating the hazards involved, knowing how to avoid them safely and using available emergency equipment.
Description: Emergency situations include stalling in a travel lane, stopping for an accident in your path, engine compartment fire, wheel fire, burned-out light bulbs, blown fuse in lighting circuit, etc. Having emergency equipment available in your vehicle and knowing how to use it will greatly assist you in avoiding hazards that arise in these types of situations.
Questions for Management:
1. Have your drivers ever been trained regarding emergency equipment requirements and emergency procedures? How? When? By whom?
2. Are all your vehicles equipped with the required emergency equipment?
3. Have you ever questioned your drivers about how to place reflective triangles or how to use the fire extinguisher or what to do if their vehicle suddenly stalls on the roadway?
4. Are your vehicles conspicuous enough when emergency equipment is used?
Maintenance Checks:
• Emergency flashers – tractor and trailer
• Spare electrical fuses (if fuses are used)
• Reflective triangles
• Fire extinguisher
• Fuses
Driving Tips:
• If you stall while driving, turn on emergency flashers immediately and try to coast off to shoulder if safe to do so.
• If you stall and stop on roadway, turn on emergency flashers immediately. Then set up reflective triangles. If you have a cell phone, call for help. At night, this is a very hazardous situation for both you and other drivers, so be extremely careful.
• Controlling and extinguishing fires safely requires special knowledge. If you don’t know how to handle a fire emergency, you can easily make the situation worse and injure or kill yourself as well.
• Select a good reference on vehicle fire control and study it well. Since you will seldom encounter a fire, it is easy to forget what to do. Refresh your memory by reviewing procedures frequently.
