Safety

Roadside Safety Services (RSS)

Dial #999 For Help

NTTA provides Roadside Safety Services (RSS) at no additional cost to anyone on an NTTA road – it’s one way of keeping our customers safe by assisting stranded drivers and help keep traffic moving.

The RSS team is trained in Traffic Incident Management so they can safely respond and handle incidents impacting travel lanes such as crashes, debris or stranded motorists. The friendly crews will change a flat tire, provide enough gas to get you to the nearest gas station, jump-start dead batteries, make minor vehicle repairs, provide traffic protection and more. You can get free help by dialing #999 – or clicking “Free Roadside Help” on NTTA’s TollMate app.

Safety Operations Center (SOC)

Dial #999

To help keep drivers safe and traffic flowing smoothly, our Safety Operations Center (SOC) is staffed with specially trained dispatchers who assess our road conditions around the clock, 365 days a year. If a stranded vehicle, crash or any other hazard is detected, these dispatchers send first responders and/or the nearest available Roadside Safety Services team to help. 

More than 20 giant video screens inside our state-of-the-art SOC provide dispatchers the ability to monitor nearly 2,000 roadside cameras at any given time. The team also programs overhead electronic signs with safety alerts and messages to help keep you safe while driving with NTTA.

Wrong-Way Driving Prevention

We pioneered deployment of industry-leading technology to minimize wrong-way driving accidents. The tools we use include:

• Thermal imaging cameras to detect if a vehicle is driving in the wrong direction, which triggers flashing signs as an instant alert to the wrong-way driver and sends notification to the Safety Operations Center (SOC)
• An automated wrong-way detection system using existing pavement sensors that immediately alert the SOC of a possible wrong-way driver
• Lowered “Wrong Way” and “Do Not Enter” signs at various locations across the system

NTTA routinely receives the suggestion to place spike strips on exit ramps to stop wrong-way vehicles, however, a Texas Department of Transportation engineering analysis concluded this is not a viable option as it presents significant risk to drivers (including vehicles traveling in the correct direction) and first responders (damaging emergency vehicles that sometimes must use exit ramps to access accidents).

If you would like to learn more about our wrong-way driving prevention efforts, please email @email.

Red Thumb

The consequences of driving distracted are severe – no text is worth a life. In 2015, NTTA joined the Red Thumb safety campaign, which is aimed at ending distracted driving, specifically texting and driving. We encourage drivers to make some part of their thumb red as a visual reminder to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times. Free Red Thumb bands are available at any NTTA Customer Service Center. Join the movement! Learn more.

More than 50 North Texas municipal, community and business partners have joined the Red Thumb program, including the cities of Allen, Coppell, Denton, Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, Plano and the Texas Department of Transportation. Join the Red Thumb movement today.