ODOT Director Encourages Collaboration to Improve Highway Incident Safety

A Message from ODOT Director Pamela Boratyn

Hello industry partners,

The Ohio Department of Transportation has one major priority that guides nearly everything we do: safety. This includes safety of everyday motorists, safety of our roadside crews, and safety of emergency responders.

Safer roads are not something that can be accomplished solo. It takes a team, and it takes cross-agency collaboration to prioritize everyone’s wellbeing, especially during an incident that results in a highway closure.

That is why ODOT began hosting regular Traffic Incident Management (TIM) training for our first responder partners in 2012. These trainings cover a host of topics – from setting up a proper taper for a lane closure, to safe egress or return into live traffic when leaving a scene. As trends in traffic change, our trainers adjust their curriculum.

Now, we’re seeing an alarming trend: more crashes are happening because of traffic backups caused by highway closures. These secondary crashes can be serious and even deadly. Over the past three years, the number of secondary crashes has steadily increased—from 382 in 2023 to a staggering 499 in 2025.

While ODOT has some mitigation strategies in place like automated queue detection warning systems on select interstates, the reality is we cannot fight this fight alone. Reduction in these types of crashes will only be accomplished through collaboration between ODOT and first responder partners.

Thus, ODOT is excited to host workshops across the state this fall called “Safer Incident Management Days.” These regionalized workshops will offer a variety of educational opportunities as well as an opportunity to facilitate important conversations about highway closures and reducing injuries and fatalities from secondary crashes. Below is a list of all Safer Incident Management Days happening across the state. I hope you’ll consider joining a workshop near you. By working together, we can help preserve the safety of every Ohioan and other travelers on the road.

Register for a Safer Incident Management Day
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