Published July 20, 2010

Watch out for Staties. (Ward/Flickr)

With the recent spate of car accidents involving Bay State troopers on duty, the president of the state police union is calling for a crackdown on drunk drivers.

On Monday, in my Q&A about the issue, reporter Curt Nickisch said Massachusetts could do more than enforce its “move over” law in trying to protect emergency responders.

Afterward, I received an e-mail from Howard Cohen, who runs the nonprofit website ResponderSafety.com. Apparently, research to that effect is more than 10 years old.

An edited excerpt of his note:

The issue of public safety personnel getting struck and injured or killed is a growing problem that generally gets little attention, but which is garnering some attention now with the five Massachusetts troopers struck, one fatally, in the past month. In about the same period, a Shelton, Conn., police officer has also been struck and killed, along with three CHP officers and a New Jersey state trooper.

We began our effort in 1998 after one of our members was struck and killed on a Maryland highway, though we soon realized the “struck-by” problem disproportionately affects police officers. On our website, ResponderSafety.com, we track struck-by’s nationwide on a daily basis, track move-over laws and move-over law developments, have free training material, offer a “white paper” that we produced on this issue more than 10 years ago and a great deal more.

The white paper (PDF), dating back to October 1999, warned of many of these problems:

Until recently the “more lights are better” approach, often incorporating variously colored strobes, rotating beacons, and pulses of light, has been in vogue.    This is being rethought in the wake of research and statistics indicating that the multitude of brilliant flashing lights may: (1) effectively blind motorists; (2) attract impaired (drunk, drugged, or dozing) motorists, and (3) emphasize apparatus but obscure response personnel.

That’s exactly what I covered yesterday.