The Emergency Responder Safety Institute (ERSI), a committee of the Cumberland Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association, heralds the publication of ASTM E3422/E3422M-24, Standard Specification for Protective Helmets Worn by Pedestrian Roadway Workers as a game changer in the fight to reduce struck-by incidents, deaths, and injuries to our nation’s first responders. It is the first standard to specify the requirements for a helmet designed to mitigate the hazards of impacts at roadway incident responses. Its publication is the culmination of years advocacy to address the unique struck-by hazards of working roadway incidents with PPE designed specifically for those hazards. The new standard is appropriate for all responders and roadway workers, including public safety (fire service, emergency medical services, law enforcement, fire police, special traffic units), road and highway construction and maintenance, towing and recovery, departments of transportation, and safety service patrols.

The ERSI is deeply grateful to ASTM and to all the members of the ASTM E54 Protective Helmets Worn by Pedestrian Roadway Workers task group who developed this groundbreaking standard. We recognize the sacrifice of the many emergency responders who died and were injured in struck-by incidents that became part of the rallying cry to develop this standard. Twenty-five years ago, the deaths of Capt. Joseph Kroboth, Jr. (The Volunteer Fire Company of Halfway, MD) and FF Dave Good (Lionville Fire Company, PA) in separate incidents two months apart led to founding the Emergency Responder Safety Institute. Since then, the ERSI has consistently advocated for a purpose-designed roadway incident response helmet that all responding organizations could use and that would protect against the unique hazards of vehicle and object impacts to responders’ heads while working on the roadway yet still permit the field-of-view and dexterity needed to do their jobs. This new standard is a critical milestone in this work.

It has been 4 years since the City of Lubbock, TX lost two public safety personnel in a catastrophic struck-by-vehicle incident while emergency personnel were working at a previous crash scene. Lubbock Fire Rescue Lieutenant Eric Hill and Lubbock Police Department Officer Nicholas Renya were killed at the scene. Lubbock Fire rescue Firefighter Matt Dawson was also struck by the same vehicle and suffered a significant traumatic brain injury along with many other injuries but initially survived that crash on Jan. 11th, 2020. FF Dawson unfortunately passed away in November of 2023. His death was classified as line-of-duty death (LODD). Both Lt. Hill and FF Dawson were wearing their structural firefighting helmets at the time of the incident, but their helmets failed them. The force of the impact knocked their helmets off their heads, thereby providing zero protection.

A Lubbock Fire Rescue colleague, Lt. Brady Robinette, resolved to do something about the fact that no helmet on the market at that time was designed for the hazards encountered when working near moving traffic. Firefighting helmets and construction type hardhats were the most popular type of helmet worn, but many roadway responders didn’t wear any helmet at all. Hardhats and structural firefighting helmets were designed to protect workers from a falling object to the top of the head, not side or rear impacts and not impacts where the body was in motion and the helmet could fall off. While they are better than no head protection, much better protection was needed for the most important organ in the body — the brain.

Lt. Robinette looked to helmets in other industries and found that they were available for virtually every activity or sport where there is a danger of a head injury. Additionally, virtually all of these helmets are designed to meet a helmet standard that addresses the hazards specific to that activity. He did his own research to identify an available helmet that was best suited to struck-by hazards, while he continued to work for a standard specifically for roadway workers. A series of personal connections with other responders who were affected by struck by incidents eventually led to support from the NIST Standards Coordination Office and from ASTM to create a new standard.

For the past two years, a task group of individuals from helmet testing laboratories, helmet manufacturers, academia, and responder end users (fire service, EMS, law enforcement, towing and recovery, and state and federal DOTs) worked to develop a helmet standard for personnel who work near moving traffic. ASTM published the Specification for Protective Helmets Worn by Pedestrian Roadway Workers in July 2024.

Today, we celebrate this victory at a vital first step, but there is much work to be done. There are no helmets on the market that have been certified/verified to this new standard. The Emergency Responder Safety Institute encourages manufacturers to design and develop a helmet that meets this new standard and go through the process of getting the helmet certified/verified to the new standard. We encourage responders, their departments, and leadership to contact helmet manufacturers and express your interest in purchasing a helmet that meets this new standard. We call on all national organizations to express their support for this standard and put the weight of their organizations behind the effort to get this standard adopted nationwide. We ask local, state, and federal governments to support this standard with appropriate legislative and funding action.

251 emergency responders lost their lives while performing their jobs at roadway incidents from 2019 to 2023. Additionally, there were 225 highway worker struck-by fatalities from 2019 to 2022. Statistics on the number of injuries and near misses are not known but it is generally accepted that they are considerably higher than the number of fatalities. Additionally, the number — and cost — of ambulances, fire trucks, police cruisers, and other roadway response vehicles that are struck and damaged is not known. The Emergency Responder Safety Institute is currently trying to better define these statistics and contributing factors by collecting voluntary struck-by reports at ReportStruckBy.com.

Helmets work when properly worn. They are designed to absorb energy during an impact. Any energy absorbed by the helmet is energy not transferred to the head. This saves lives, reduces the severity of injuries, and — in the best-case scenario — prevents or mitigates a head injury. An appropriate helmet is a basic piece of PPE that all responders who work on the roadway must wear. Until new helmets certified to ASTM E3422 hit the market, wear whatever helmet you have with its chinstrap secured and nape adjustment tightened when working around moving traffic.

ASTM E3422/E3422M be accessed using this link: E3422/E3422M Standard Specification for Protective Helmets Worn by Pedestrian Roadway Workers (astm.org). There is a nominal cost to purchase the full document.