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Fire Apparatus Rollover Protection 

THIS WEEK FIREGEEZER ASKED ME to pen a few words about fire apparatus side-rollover protection systems. It is well established within the firefighting community that apparatus accidents are a major cause of firefighter fatalities. Beyond the fatalities are thousands of serious injuries that result from these accidents. Rollover accidents are always a significant percentage of the incidents that involve both fatalities and serious injuries.

In today’s fire service environment, fire apparatus are on the road (and thus exposed to the potential for accidents) more than ever. In many departments, the engine company apparatus has become a multi-purpose first responder vehicle that can easily make a dozen emergency responses a day. Even in less populated areas, the local FD is considered the “go to” organization for just about anything except law enforcement and these departments too are on the road, often making long distance responses on less than ideal roads.

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About 5 years ago, one of the major fire apparatus manufacturers, working with a company that specializes in occupant safety systems for the automotive industry, introduced a system that was designed to prevent fatalities and lessen the severity of firefighter injuries in rollover accidents. They called the system Side Roll Protection, or SRP for short. Today, 5 of the custom chassis manufacturers offer similar systems, all developed in concert with the same company.

How does the system work?

First, there is what can best be described as an electronic gyroscope that is constantly monitoring the position of the cab relative to horizontal. This device is in constant communication with an electronic control module. If this electronic controller “sees” that the cab is at such an angle — once again, relative to horizontal — that a rollover is inevitable, it sends signals to various devices located in the cab that do the following:

1.    Side curtain-style air bags are deployed. These air bags are designed to create a barrier between the driver, officer and (depending on seating configuration) crew members and the interior surfaces of the cab. The idea is to limit the severity of injuries to the head and neck, as well as other parts of the body.2.    The driver’s seat is lowered to its full down position, creating as much separation as possible between the steering wheel and the driver’s mid-section. The reality is that the driver often isn’t the skinniest person on the crew and research conducted during the development of these systems showed that many drivers were suffering serious abdominal injuries in rollover accidents because of coming in contact with the steering wheel.3.    “Pre-tensioners” are activated for all seat belts. The best way I can describe this is that the seat belt/shoulder harness grab the firefighter and pin him or her to the seat, the objective being to limit their movement during the rollover.All of this happens in about a second…The system acts as a silent sentry. You don’t have to turn the system on, activate a switch or really do anything. Well, that is not exactly true. For the system to have what an engineer would call “protective benefit” the firefighters in the cab have to wear their seatbelts. Without your seatbelt on, the bags will deploy, the driver’s seat will lower and the seat belts will “pre-tension” in empty seats because the unbelted firefighter(s) in the cab will be flying around inside, or worse yet, ejected during the rollover.In my experience, I’m not aware of any of these systems being activated in a real life rollover…yet. Nor am I aware of any accidental activations. (If any of our readers have heard of either, I would love to hear from you.) Since coming on the market, SRP systems have become what I would call somewhat popular, but certainly not universally so. Some departments don’t perceive rollovers as being a significant enough risk to warrant the expense of the system. Others are afraid that in specifying such a system, competition for their fire truck business might be limited or their manufacturer of choice wouldn’t be in the game if they don’t offer the system.What do I think the reason behind the stated reason is? Simple: While Chiefs, apparatus officers and committee chairmen don’t like to admit it (some do, reluctantly) the real reason is that there’s no point in having SRP since seat belt usage is – I’ll be polite – less than universal. There are lots of others who have written about the seat belt issue far better than I, so I won’t go there. I’ll just close with this: We talk the safety game a lot, but we’ve got a long way to go if getting firefighters to use their seat belts remains a major challenge.

To view an animation of how the RollTek system works, click HERE.

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