There are two clocks running from the moment an active shooter begins; the shooter’s clock and the victim’s clock. One clock is concerned with living; one clock is concerned with dying. The shooter has to shoot as many people as possible before he’s stopped. The victim (casualty) has a period of time, depending on their trauma, where they can still be treated and live. The idea behind rescue task forces is to start working on the victim’s clock.

Every driver has likely experienced the mini-heart attack after looking in the rearview mirror and seeing a fire engine or ambulance blaring its siren mere feet behind the vehicle. Typically, the driver veers off to the shoulder as quickly as possible and waits until the emergency vehicle passes.

This problem can be exacerbated when cars go through intersections if other drivers are unable to hear or see the oncoming emergency vehicles. This is often where emergency vehicles can experience accidents causing a slowdown in response time and millions of dollars in repairs.

Los Angeles police have long used "less-lethal" launchers with sponge rounds for crowd control and by their elite SWAT team on individuals when less than deadly force may have been needed.

But in July, the Los Angeles Police Department equipped patrol officers from several stations, including the Mission Community Police Station in Mission Hills, with these "guns" and their 40 mm sponge rounds, which are intended to incapacitate but not kill a subject, to use on their beats for the first time.

Traffic Incident Response Week is a time to recognize emergency responders and their tireless effort to help save lives at the scenes of traffic incidents across the country. Every year hundreds of emergency responders representing fire, law enforcement, emergency medical services, towing, and transportation agencies lose their lives while responding to incidents.