Newhouse News Service

The driver loses control of the car, which careens off the road and flips several times. The driver is trapped inside. But just as rescue personnel are about to slice through the wreckage with the metal-cutting “jaws of life,” they notice the vehicle is a hybrid.

They pause, wondering if it’s safe to cut into a battery-powered vehicle packing hundreds of volts of electrical current.

As more and more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles hit the roads, it is a question emergency crews are confronting with growing frequency.

Depending on the hybrid model, voltage in the vehicles’ electrical systems can deliver up to 650 volts, enough to cause a serious electrical jolt.

“It could kill you,” says David Schimmel of the New Jersey State First Aid Council.

Schimmel, the council’s director of mobilization and disaster services and its lead extrication instructor, says hybrid vehicles are “absolutely” on the radar screen of emergency first responders.

“We have extrication training and it’s part of that,” he says. “It should be part of any training program.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not compiled statistics on the number of accidents involving hybrid vehicles or whether any first responders have been injured at the scene of a crash involving a hybrid.

“They really haven’t been on the road long enough to develop any comprehensive database,” says NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson.

Hybrids have been on the market in the United States since the late 1990s. The two leading manufacturers today are Honda and Toyota, both of which are ramping up production levels. Ford and General Motors recently introduced hybrids, and other domestic automakers are expected to follow.

While hybrids account for barely 1 percent of new auto sales in the U.S., that number is expected to increase to 4 percent by 2010, according to projections by J.D. Power-LMC Automotive Forecasting Service.

Toyota spokesman Wade Hoyt says emergency response training for hybrids should be encouraged.

“You don’t want to have any of the emergency workers hesitate when they approach a hybrid vehicle,” Hoyt says. “The last thing you want them to do is to stand around when a vehicle is on fire or someone is trapped inside.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Annette Van Horn, customer relations manager at Muller Toyota in Clinton, N.J., says the dealership began offering such training sessions this fall after a local police officer inquired about the safety of rescue operations on hybrids involved in accidents.

“That’s how it all started, just because one cop asked me,” Van Horn says. The dealership has now offered four of the training sessions and plans to continue next year.

Service technicians trained in hybrid technology show rescue squad members how to recognize a hybrid and what to do to make sure the electrical system is deactivated before they begin to extricate an accident victim.

They learn the location of various components of the electrical system – the battery pack in the rear, the power cables running through the chassis, the inverter and electrical motor in the engine compartment and the “READY” warning light on the dashboard that indicates the power is on.

The technicians caution that even after disabling the system by making sure the ignition is off with the key removed and the 12-volt auxiliary battery disconnected as an added precaution, power still remains in the system for up to five minutes.

RB END LARINI

(Rudy Larini is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at rlarini(at)starledger.com.)

AP-NY-12-02-05 1031EST

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