firetender
Community Leader Emeritus
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Here's a bit of a reality check from my POV.
Driving an ambulance, out of necessity, requires you to develop a completely different skill-set than driving your own vehicle. If you do not train yourself to immediately amp your alertness level up a couple hundred percent, you're not doing your job. (Most of us learn to do this in the ambulance and then bring that level of awareness to our personal driving.)
No matter whether you're going to or from a call, the stakes are high. Situations that ambulances find themselves in are often quite different than what Ma and Pa Grunch encounter. In a lot of respects, an ambulance responding to an emergency call becomes an inadvertent target, just because it draws attention to itself and most people do not know how to respond to emergencies themselves.
You must develop a very sharp sense of timing, speed, spatial relationships (like getting through the bottleneck without losing your side-view mirror!) and knowing the limits of every vehicle you drive. Equally important, is learning patience.
Unfortunately, moment-to-moment situations have no repect for written laws. If you're in the field long enough you will find yourself pushing the edge of the envelope and acting out of the box out of necessity, and, yes, laws will be broken along the way. Sometimes you'll make an error in judgment, but that's part of the learning curve that gets you to becoming more proficient -- as long as you learn.
If you're in a town where you get to know the local Police, hopefully, they'll give you a break only when and if their read of the circumstances and knowledge of you as a responsible medic are in synch. Just like everyone else, if you run a risk you need to accept the consequences. Cops also know what it means to have to "think at high speed." Hopefully, it's a matter of individual respect rather than blind, professional courtesy extended to you.
My point is, I think we're lying to ourselves if we say we don't think differently, and, given the right circumstances will act differently behind the wheel than the prescribed (or even legal) approaches.
It truly is a matter of carrying a heightened sense of responsibility along with the new skill-set you're asked to develop.
Driving an ambulance, out of necessity, requires you to develop a completely different skill-set than driving your own vehicle. If you do not train yourself to immediately amp your alertness level up a couple hundred percent, you're not doing your job. (Most of us learn to do this in the ambulance and then bring that level of awareness to our personal driving.)
No matter whether you're going to or from a call, the stakes are high. Situations that ambulances find themselves in are often quite different than what Ma and Pa Grunch encounter. In a lot of respects, an ambulance responding to an emergency call becomes an inadvertent target, just because it draws attention to itself and most people do not know how to respond to emergencies themselves.
You must develop a very sharp sense of timing, speed, spatial relationships (like getting through the bottleneck without losing your side-view mirror!) and knowing the limits of every vehicle you drive. Equally important, is learning patience.
Unfortunately, moment-to-moment situations have no repect for written laws. If you're in the field long enough you will find yourself pushing the edge of the envelope and acting out of the box out of necessity, and, yes, laws will be broken along the way. Sometimes you'll make an error in judgment, but that's part of the learning curve that gets you to becoming more proficient -- as long as you learn.
If you're in a town where you get to know the local Police, hopefully, they'll give you a break only when and if their read of the circumstances and knowledge of you as a responsible medic are in synch. Just like everyone else, if you run a risk you need to accept the consequences. Cops also know what it means to have to "think at high speed." Hopefully, it's a matter of individual respect rather than blind, professional courtesy extended to you.
My point is, I think we're lying to ourselves if we say we don't think differently, and, given the right circumstances will act differently behind the wheel than the prescribed (or even legal) approaches.
It truly is a matter of carrying a heightened sense of responsibility along with the new skill-set you're asked to develop.
