A Crash Course in Car Crashes

*To take the corresponding CDE quiz, visit the College of Emergency Dispatch.*

Did you know that the first fatal automobile accident in the United States didn’t involve a gasoline-powered vehicle? On Sept. 13, 1899, a real estate dealer named Henry H. Bliss was hit by an electric taxicab in New York City (New York, USA), and his skull and chest were crushed by the wheels of the cab, resulting in his death.¹ Thirty years before that in Ireland, a scientist named Mary Ward fell from a steam-powered carriage and was crushed by its heavy iron wheels in what is widely regarded as the first fatality caused by an automobile in history.²

Whether the fuel used to power them is electricity, gasoline, or even steam, motorized vehicles have been dangerous to the humans who use them since they were invented. 

As electrical vehicles (EVs) and automobiles that use alternative fuels become more and more common on the streets, the minds behind the Fire Priority Dispatch System^™ (FPDS^®) are keeping up with those changes to adjust the protocol to account for potential hazards to drivers, passersby, and on-scene first responders.

Most recently, the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch^® (IAED^™) released version 8.0 of the FPDS as a result of Proposals For Change (PFCs) sent in by members like you. Other changes were made to keep up with evolving industry standards in the fire first response community, as well as a desire within the IAED to strengthen the sense of continuity between the FPDS and the Medical Priority Dispatch System^™ (MPDS^®) and Police Priority Dispatch System^™ (PPDS^®).

Emergency calls made about car accidents are extremely common. Between the MPDS, FPDS, and PPDS, Emergency Dispatchers from over 600 agencies across the globe took over half a million calls regarding traffic incidents in 2024, according to the IAED Data Center. 

Because there are Chief Complaints that handle traffic accidents in all three disciplines, every agency that uses MPDS and/or PPDS alongside the FPDS has their own policy for which discipline to use depending on the presence or absence of injuries, the need for special rescue operations or specialized response vehicles, and the presence of onscene hazards or scene safety concerns.

For agencies that do use the FPDS to handle traffic accidents, Protocol 77: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident—which used to be called “Motor Vehicle Collison”—accounted for 7.72% of all calls. The only other Chief Complaints that saw more use were Protocol 52: Alarms and Protocol 53: Service Call.

Updates
So what’s changed and why? Here are some of the most important updates to Protocol 77: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident.

New name
Why does it matter that “Motor Vehicle Collision” is now called “Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident” when it means the same thing? If you are at an agency that also uses the MPDS and/or PPDS, you already know the answer. In both the MPDS and PPDS, the wording used for car crashes is “Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident” (for Protocol 29 and Protocol 131, respectively). This small but significant change was made to bring more unity between the wording in all three disciplines.

New ECHO code and tool
There is a new ECHO code available in version 8.0: 77-E-2 for “Accelerator stuck & can’t stop vehicle.” You can access its companion tool by clicking on the stop sign icon at the top of your ProQA® window in Case Entry, bypassing the usual Case Entry Questions about location and phone number since speed is of the essence in cases like this. The aim of both the code and the tool is getting the vehicle to slow down and stop by either getting the vehicle into Neutral (or “N”), which is the preferred method, or turning off the engine (but not the entire electrical system), which is the “last resort method.”

There’s also a way to access the tool that’s been hardwired into the logic of Protocol 77: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident, and there are three potential pathways forward depending on whether the vehicle stopped safely without crashing, whether it stopped because it crashed, or whether the vehicle hasn’t stopped at all.

Key Questions
You may have also noticed that many of the Key Questions you’re used to reading on this Chief Complaint are now Jurisdictionally Approved Questions, such as asking the caller if a vehicle using electric or alternative fuel is involved or if the accident is on a highway/freeway or interstate. Your agency might have turned them off altogether based on the resources available in order to get to a dispatch point more quickly. Jurisdictionally Approved Questions are noted by purple font and must still be read.

In order to better prioritize scene safety, certain Key Questions that can be answered with reports of injury or hazardous materials involved were moved up in the questioning process.

New Pre-Arrival protocols
As part of the effort to make the MPDS, PPDS, and FPDS as alike as possible while also acknowledging and catering to significant differences in the disciplines, the IAED has added two new Pre-Arrival protocols to the FPDS: Protocol H: Medical Assessment and Treatment and Protocol V: Vehicle on Fire (Caller Inside). Of the two, you’ll probably get more mileage out of the new Protocol H, since injuries from traffic collisions and other transportation incidents are more common than vehicles catching on fire with someone inside.

Protocol H: Medical Assessment and Treatment includes a fairly comprehensive suite of medical instructions brought over from the MPDS to better assess scene safety before instructing the caller to begin any medical treatment. It also instructs you, the EFD, in what to do if a scene that was previously safe becomes unsafe later.

The instructions include bleeding control (applying pressure to the wound and tourniquet application instructions for more severe bleeding cases), basic trauma treatment, airway positioning, and, of course, burn treatment. Whether or not your agency already uses the MPDS, take the time to familiarize yourself with the concepts of Protocol H.

One significant set of medical instructions did NOT come over from the MPDS, however. Instructions for administering CPR and chest compressions are still not available in the FPDS for a number of operational and administrative reasons.

Mike Thompson, Fire Protocol, Academics and Standards Expert and Chair of the Fire Curriculum Council wrote, “You do occasionally see a patient in an MVA [motor vehicle accident] that has arrested secondary to a medical problem, but those are virtually impossible to sort out in the dispatch process in terms of who might be able to be resuscitated versus who shouldn’t be. 

“[…] In an MVA, I would say that once again ensuring scene safety is very much a potential issue as compared with other incident types,” he continued.

For more information on why CPR and chest compression instructions aren’t included in the FPDS, check out the Ask Doc Journal article from April 2023 titled, “Why Aren’t There CPR Instructions in FPDS or PPDS?”³

Protocol 77 versus Protocol 71
The second Pre-Arrival Instruction protocol that was added to FPDS v8.0 is Protocol V: Vehicle on Fire (Caller Inside). It has some similarities to the Pre-Arrival Instructions for Protocol A: Water Rescue for a sinking vehicle—and as with Protocol A, for a 1st party caller in a vehicle on fire, getting them out of the vehicle safely is the No. 1 priority. Go directly to the PAIs without obtaining an address, phone number, or name during Case Entry.

Which Chief Complaint should you choose if a vehicle catches on fire due to a traffic collision? Protocol 71: Vehicle Fire or Protocol 77: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident? It may seem like an easy choice, but if the car is on fire, choose Protocol 71: Vehicle Fire and its accompanying instructions since the primary concern (or the Chief Complaint, if you will) is that the vehicle is on fire. It is, however, important to let the firefighters know that the fire was an aftereffect of a crash rather than spontaneous combustion. The “what” might be the most important aspect, but don’t ignore the “how.”

Conclusion
As automobiles continue to evolve, the protocols will likewise continue to evolve to make sure that we are getting the right help to the right place at the right time. Stay tuned for more updates!

Sources

1. Weingroff R. “A Moment in Time: Safe Driving Day 1954-1955.” U.S. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration. 2023; June 30. https://highways.dot.gov/highway-history/general-highway-history/moment-time-safe-driving-day-1954-1955 (accessed Feb. 25, 2025).

2. Fallon I., O’Neill D. “The world’s first automobile fatality.” Accident Analysis & Prevention. 2007; April 7. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15949449 (accessed Feb. 25, 2025).

3. Patterson B., Thompson M., Warner D. “Why Aren’t There CPR Instructions in FPDS or PPDS?” Journal of Emergency Dispatch. 2023; April 12. iaedjournal.org/why-arent-there-cpr-instructions-in-fpds-or-ppds (accessed Feb. 25, 2025).