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Chris Mc Loone |
It’s still happening. We are still wrecking fire apparatus. And in recent months, we have been wrecking them with other emergency vehicles.
I watch the videos-we all do. A simple Internet search will reveal all sorts of videos of apparatus responding. I’ve posted some of them myself on FireApparatus.com. Some of them are interesting, and some of them have lessons to teach. I see some of them though and wonder, what in the world is the driver thinking? When I first got qualified on our apparatus, I made rookie driver mistakes. We all do-no one’s perfect. But, some of these accidents-they’re not rookie mistakes. When has it ever been OK to run a red light with fire apparatus in the modern era?
One recent accident occurred in Florida. I’ve seen the video of it. And, video was made available shortly after the crash from four different angles. One of the angles pretty clearly shows one emergency vehicle not slowing down or stopping for a red light at the intersection. But, let’s not focus on that. There is no doubt the striking vehicle should have stopped. It’s a red light. But, let’s talk about the struck vehicle. The struck fire apparatus didn’t stop either. From the video, it looked to me like the apparatus operator didn’t even slow down. He had the green; he went. Most of us have seen the result.
A couple of lessons I recall from my days as a young apparatus operator come to mind. First was my deputy chief at the time saying, “Let me tell you something about driving an emergency vehicle. When you come to a traffic light, you stop.” The second is the chief engineer who trained me. He always told me when driving to make sure other drivers know what I am going to do. He said drivers who drive with a degree of uncertainty are just as dangerous as or more dangerous than drivers who do so with wreckless abandon.
The first bit of advice came after a mistake. To this day I maintain that I had control of the vehicle. However, the white hat sitting to my right didn’t share my confidence, and the passengers in the vehicle are the ones who count. If the officer isn’t feeling real confident, imagine how the crew in the back of the truck must feel about the ride. Having moved to the right side of the truck and having stepped on the imaginary brake pedal on that side, I have a good idea of how my deputy was feeling at that moment. He did the right thing. At the incident before we left, he took me aside, and he hasn’t had to take me aside since. I was young.
Making sure other drivers know what you are going to do-this is the responsibility of the driver and the officer. If you give the driver clear instructions about how you want to go, how you want him to respond, and any other expectations, the driver will be a lot better off, won’t be as jumpy, and will drive confidently.
Recently, we had a torrential downpour for about 15 minutes at around midnight or so. When it rains like that, and we experience floods, and the water rescues start, we go nonstop for probably a couple of hours, responding all over our township. Because of the time of day, we didn’t have any water rescues. We did have flooding though, and I was up front in our first-out piece for a fire call with a driver who had just been qualified on it the week before. He did well. We knew where we were headed, and I knew where the flooding was. He’s new though, and still young. He was itching to get going. We got to some water, and I made sure he knew in no uncertain terms that he was to slow down big time as w