Nevada’s Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol are reminding motorists to pay attention, slow down and move over for traffic and emergency response vehicles during national Traffic Incident Response Awareness Week.
They point out traffic incidents are the primary cause of death for police officers and emergency medical responders nationwide.
To help prevent those incidents, Nevada has passed a law requiring drivers to slow down, pay atention, and if possible, move to the far lane when passing emergency response vehicles. That law has also been updated to require drivers do the same for NDOT roadwork vehicles.
“Every day in Nevada, your police, fire and other public safety workers are out on the roads helping drivers who have been in some sort of mishap,” said Reno firefighter Mark Hilty. “We’re working in traffic and things are only made worse if one of us is injured or killed by a passing vehicle.”
He urged drivers to give emergency and roadworker vehicles as much space as possible.
