Carson City, NV : New type of vehicle clearing crashes on Las Vegas Valley freeways on Wednesday, December 28th 2016

You’re driving in rush-hour traffic on Interstate 15 when you’re confronted with a familiar sight: stopped traffic. Then you notice something less familiar: a vehicle that isn’t quite a tow truck, nor is it a police car.

It probably is a Multi-use Response Vehicle, which the Nevada Department of Transportation began using on Las Vegas Valley roads Dec. 19. The red-and-white flatbed vehicle provides the same functions as a traditional freeway service patrol van but has a special power: It can move two vehicles simultaneously.

The goal is to remove vehicles from a crash sites more quickly and easily so they can be towed, NDOT traffic operations engineer Juan Hernandez said.

The MRV — there’s only one in service in the area for now — will not compete with private towing companies, NDOT public-information officer Tony Illia said; it will move vehicles only short distances.


The MRV will operate from about 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily and will cover about 11 routes across Interstate 15, U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 515. The state’s contracted towing company Quality Towing will operate the MRV, according to NDOT.

“The biggest issue that we’re having in the valley is not the crash itself, but secondary crash,” Freeway Service Patrol operations manager Eric Roberts said. “This truck provides the ability to get the vehicle out of the travel lane.”

“Nobody wants to be in the middle of the I-15 with people traveling around them,” he added.

A new MRV will be unveiled in Reno in January, Illia said.

NDOT purchased the vehicle using an annual sponsorship grant (about $330,000) it received from the State Farm Assist Patrol Program. The MRV costs about $106,000, Illia said.

The MRV is an extension of the Freeway Service Patrol, which is sponsored by State Farm. The Freeway Service Patrol assisted with 19,285 disabled vehicles last year in Southern Nevada, which is 15 percent more than in 2014, according to the NDOT.

Twenty-five percent of traffic delays in Nevada are caused by crashes, breakdowns and debris, according to NDOT. Statistics show that for every minute a freeway lane is blocked, the resulting traffic congestion takes about four minutes to clear and increases the number of secondary crashes by nearly 3 percent.

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