Know the Conditions at the Incident, Not Just That There Is One
“Crash on I-80, right lane blocked.” That sentence describes two completely different events. In one, it’s a dry afternoon, the lane clears in twenty minutes, and the right call is to hold the load and wait. In the other, the pavement is iced, visibility is down to a quarter mile, and the wind is gusting across an exposed grade — in which case the crash you can see is the least interesting fact…
Incident reports often only mention the crash itself without providing important context about the weather conditions that may have contributed to the accident. Dispatchers need more information than just the initial incident description to make informed decisions. Roadside weather stations, known as RWIS, provide real-time data on temperature, wind, visibility, humidity, precipitation type, and road surface conditions.
There are thousands of active RWIS across the United States, and this data can be accessed and used by dispatchers. When an incident is reported, dispatchers should immediately look for the nearest active weather station within 50 km and note the conditions at that moment. These conditions can provide crucial context and help dispatchers make better decisions.
For example, a crash on a dry road with no precipitation and good visibility may call for holding the load and waiting, while a crash on an icy road with low visibility and high winds may require rerouting the following loads. The key is to analyze the incident in the context of the actual weather conditions at the time of the event.
Dispatchers must treat these weather conditions as part of the incident record and make decisions accordingly.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
