Colorado Department of Transportation unveils trucks to protect emergency responders from crashes

The Colorado Department of Transportation is unveiling its new crash prevention trucks that will help protect emergency crews responding to scenes. This is part of the agency's traffic incident management training to keep everyone safe.

CDOT says each of these trucks will be used to protect emergency responders. If a driver is too close and they are not paying attention, the attenuators will take the impact of the crash. As drivers are going through an area of a crash, sometimes the secondary crash is a lot worse than the first. 

CDOT says each of these trucks costs about $250,000 and will be mostly used around the Denver area. Right now, they have about two of them that would be used for crash protection. Each time one of these attenuators takes the blow, it protects the firefighters, police officers, tow truck operators, and EMS on scene. 

CDOT says these are way easier to replace at $30,000 than it would be to replace a fire truck that was hit at $2 million. Now, even though they have these vehicles to help protect from a secondary crash, emergency responders say all crashes are preventable, so it should never happen in the first place.

"Secondary accidents are too common, and it's unacceptable," FHWA Administrator Sean McMaster said. "Zero is the only number of accidents we will accept."

"Emergency responders are also reminding everyone of the Move Over law. If you see them responding, you need to either move over a lane or slow down past them.