RISK MANAGERS ARE ON THE SNOWFIGHTING T-E-A-M

A public agency risk manager recently told me that he measures winters by how much his agency has to pay out in accident claims involving poor winter maintenance of streets, sidewalks and roadways. Snowfighters measure winter’s severity by their salt usage or budget-busting expenditures. Every year highway agencies and risk managers share a concern for effective winter maintenance – hopefully, as partners. This partnership is as simple and direct as a mathematical equation:

Snowfighters + Risk Managers = Effective Winter Maintenance

Using the same approach:

Benefits of Winter Maintenance should be > 1

Costs of Winter Maintenance

Where:

Benefits of Winter Maintenance = reduced property damage + reduced personal injury + improved emergency response + improved public security + improved public mobility + sustained economic activity + public perception of competent public administration

and, most relevantly for this discussion of the partnership between Snowfighters and risk managers:

Costs of winter maintenance = snowfighting costs (materials, equipment and labor) + liability claims (property damage + personal injury + environmental)

It all adds up to:

Effective Winter Maintenance = Serving the public interest for safety and mobility

In an informal survey of snowbelt municipalities conducted by the Salt Institute, risk managers reported their highway agencies spend between $745,000 for winter maintenance of 832 miles of roadway ($895/mile) up to $25 million for servicing 3,300 miles ($7,575/mile), while providing a range of training time between 2.5 hours and 8.0 hours per snowfighter annually. Up to 13 vehicle accidents (1 accident per 64 miles of roadway) were reported by one risk manager for the winter of 1995-96. And two-thirds of the risk managers say they consider highway winter maintenance important to the success of their risk management program.

As winter seasons approach, municipalities in the snowbelt, in the above survey, invest heavily in preparation, like squirrels storing up food for the cold season. Even though the majority of risk managers see the importance of highway winter maintenance, most highway agencies have not focused on the fact that they play an important role in shaping their public risk strategy in the war against wintertime traffic crashes. But how does your state, city, county, township or district prepare for the potential effects of hazardous driving conditions? Will this winter season be a good year or a bad year based on the sums of money needed to settle claims and lawsuits due to poor highway winter maintenance? Are you and your team of snowfighters going to be ready for the winter of 1997-98? It is questions like these that can keep you awake as the nights grow longer this coming winter.

Marginal snow and ice states may receive only a few days of true winter, but unprepared Snowfighters reduce traffic to a standstill due to lack of equipment, deicing materials and training. Few investments pay off as well, and as quickly, as prepared Snowfighters.

The Real "Bottom Line"

Seminal research by David Kuemmel, Director of the Center for Highway & Traffic Engineering at Marquette University has documented that:

• deicing pays for itself within the first 25 minutes
• during the first four hours after the hour of application of salt, the direct road user benefits were $6.50 for every $1.00 spent on direct maintenance costs for the operation
• 88.3% of all injury accidents during winter storms can be avoided simply by deicing roadways.

And these impacts fall directly to the "bottom line." On February 18, 1997, Jury Verdict Research reported that in three short years from 1992 to 1995 the average traffic fatality award has increased 121% from $283,000 $628,000. The National Safety Council calculates the average liability or cost for a fatality on the highway in 1995 was $810,000. As reported in the Spring 1994 Salt & Highway Deicing newsletter (Vol. 30 No. 1), the calculated benefits to the State of Michigan for its snowfighting investment has paid dividends of $2.5 billion figuring only the cost of lives lost and injuries during the 1991-92 winter season, excluding vehicle and other property damage. In fact, USA Today reported in December 1996, using the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as a source, that annual U.S. costs from motor vehicle crashes exceed $150.5 billion - about $580 for every citizen. Having heard from risk managers that a majority of these accidents occur during the winter season, just a small reduction in such vehicle crashes means significant savings to insurers, crash victims, and local, state, and federal agencies.

Some agencies have considered using abrasives like sand or salt and sand mixed.  In most circumstances, this is not economically justifiable.

But public service isn’t just about budget numbers and tax savings. Effective snowfighting keeps a lot of real-world headlines from happening:

• the family of four killed when their vehicle slid off the icy street into a river and they drowned
• a church basketball team perished when the van they were riding in slid into the pathway of an oncoming vehicle
• a fifteen car pileup immobilized an icy highway, stranding thousands
• an entire urban Interstate closed due to ice on the overpass

The bottom line isn’t just making tax dollars work harder. It’s preserving life and mobility. It’s preventing tragedies so demonstrably avoidable through effective snowfighting.

A TEAM Effort

So what is the answer to this potential loss? From the maintenance engineer’s perspective, the three components of the TEAM approach save time and money. Training, Equipment And Materials (TEAM) all play a critical part in having a successful winter season even when the public's demand for wintertime safety and mobility is becoming stronger for highway departments and risk management departments alike.

Training of highway agency personnel responsible for winter maintenance includes efficient application and implementation of local agency strategies to provide the best deicing service. There are videotapes available from various sources to help with such training, some are all-encompassing and some target specific techniques to improve efficiency. One Salt Institute tape, The Snowfighters, is a component of the Institute’s Sensible Salting program. This twenty-one minute video covers everything from correct storage of deicing materials to prevent environmental concerns and minimize agency liability exposure, to deicing material application rates, calibrating equipment, and other state-of-the-art techniques used in today's snowfighting efforts. Training can be the most effective, preventive way to help reduce your exposure of a large number of claims associated with poor roadway maintenance.

Equipment must be maintained and ready to roll when Mother Nature decides to unload. Automatic spreader controls can reduce quantities of deicing materials used, while reducing chances that over application will cause environmental concerns or runoff problems. Some cities are investing in another new technology: Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS). In a metropolitan area, several RWIS may be installed to measure the temperature of the roadway surface and moisture levels. Newly out, there is an infrared sensor mirror-mounted instrument manufactured by Sprague Controls (phone 503/263-0526) which measures the roadway surface temperature. This new mobile RWIS costing only $400-$500 can provide the operators/snowfighters with up to the minute/mile temperatures for application decisions. These help highway agencies to be completely up to speed on conditions over a large metropolitan area or right where they are. Only when roadway surface temperatures fall below the freezing levels should deicing materials be applied. Again saving on the winter roadway deicing bill while providing the safety demanded by the driving public.

Materials are the final ingredient of a successful winter highway maintenance effort. The key is to have enough of the right deicing materials on hand to take care of estimated needs, lessening the risk of interrupted supply, chaos and accidents on the roads. Agencies should have 100% of their estimated full-winter needs on-site before the first snowfall, which is usually calculated by taking a five year average. The most cost effective way to receive deicing materials is to order early so shipments can be made during the normal shipping season e.g. spring through late summer. As days get shorter, deliveries are more likely to be uncertain. Rail and trucking shipments are more costly. You may recall that in the winter of 1993-94, several agencies ran out of deicing materials and were forced to settle for lower levels of roadway maintenance, increasing liability exposure to municipalities. Deicing salt was available, but only at the salt production facility and not where it needed to be to meet the public's demand to maintain highways for safe travel and mobility.

Keeping It Clean

From a risk management standpoint, environmentally safe storage also is a must. There have been cases where agencies did not store deicing materials correctly and leaching into the surrounding water table ultimately contaminated drinking water and led to adverse publicity and liability claims (estimated by Maine DOT to cost taxpayers an average of $10,000 to $20,000 per claim). Two simple techniques of storage should always be adhered to: storage on an impermeable surface like high quality concrete or asphalt is critical and the materials should be stored under a shed or roof. These two steps can prevent a lot of headaches down the road, not to mention the risks involved without them. Yes, storage facilities require capital investments running anywhere from $50,000-$500,000 depending on the size and type. But it takes only a few contamination suits to justify this long term (20-25 years) investment in safe storage. And as regulatory entities continue to push for tougher environmental laws, the issue of proper deicing material storage is a "when", not "if."

In addition to proper storage of deicing materials, attention should be paid to potential environmental hazards posed by the type of materials used. Air pollution and quality standards are becoming more and more of an issue for municipalities striving to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Air Quality Standards. The EPA considers PM₁₀ (particulate matter in the air smaller than 10 microns) a growing issue concerning respiratory diseases. One of the sources for PM₁₀ is the use of abrasives, such as sand or gravel, for winter highway maintenance. In Utah, agencies stopped using sand because of PM₁₀ dust problems. The city of Denver replaced sand with soluble deicing materials due to its so called "brown cloud." A 1995 study showed up to 89% (an average of 59%) of the total particulate loading came from road sanding. A study is currently underway in the State of Washington to determine the respiratory effects of PM₁₀. As the EPA continues to pursue this concern, highway agencies must become more aware of the PM₁₀ issue and how it influences their choice of deicing materials.