Do emergency vehicles use turn signals?

[Kaervak]

You guys are heroes btw (paramedics that is)! I don't envy that job.

BTW as a side topic do you have people calling you to pick up drunk guys a lot? My mother is an assistant manager of a 7-11 (and I was too for a few years) and she sees this a lot. One guy in particular sits in front of the store pan handling till he gets enough money to buy some bottles of listerene or booze (we don't sell alcohol in convenience stores here in Canada so he would get the booze elsewhere). He will then chug the booze or listerene and pass out on the street. People walking buy feel sorry for him or are afraid he's going to die so they all an ambulance for him. Got to the point where they were sending an ambulance for the guy every few days.

I work in private EMS, most of our clients are nursing home or bat shit crazy people that are being transferred over to a psychiatric hospital/facility. A few going to the psych facility are going for drugs/alcohol reasons, but they're usually not actively drunk/high. I've had a few violent psych patients, but for the most part everyone is cool.

 

[Locut0s]

I work in private EMS, most of our clients are nursing home or bat shit crazy people that are being transferred over to a psychiatric hospital/facility. A few going to the psych facility are going for drugs/alcohol reasons, but they're usually not actively drunk/high. I've had a few violent psych patients, but for the most part everyone is cool.

This whole concept is alien to me coming from Canada, single payer system here.

 

[TheVrolok]

This whole concept is alien to me coming from Canada, single payer system here.

I'm sure you guys have non-emergency/emergency transport arrangements for inter-facility transports. It's just that the guys driving those trucks are employed by the government instead of a private company.

 

[Locut0s]

I'm sure you guys have non-emergency/emergency transport arrangements for inter-facility transports. It's just that the guys driving those trucks are employed by the government instead of a private company.

Yeah probably. For all I know they may be private too. I thought he was talking about regular emergency 911 vehicles.

 

[Kaervak]

Yeah probably. For all I know they may be private too. I thought he was talking about regular emergency 911 vehicles.

Some 911 around here is done by private EMS companies but not much. As TheVrolok said, what most private EMS does is nursing home to hospital ER runs, hospital to nursing home, nursing home to Dr. appointment and return & nursing home to dialysis and return. You can call us just like a 911 service, but with how busy we are you're much better off calling municipal EMS since they just sit on their asses all day.

 

[MtnMan]

People go stupid when emergency vehicles approach.

Almost deserted two lane road, overtaking one car, one car approaching in the other lane, and they manage to stop side-by-side, completely blocking the road. Took a 10 second blast of the air horn to get either of them to move.

 

[DrPizza]

I can tell you very few will use turn signals around here during normal driving so I doubt they do it for emergencies. Great example for the masses

Do you really believe that people who are used to driving a car just suddenly change their driving habits? If both hands are on the wheel, it would be hard for most people to break a habit of signaling turns - it's something that adults (not 19 year old relatively new drivers) do without thinking - it's habit. But, depending on the circumstances, (i.e. right hand on the siren/horn), it's possible that they're not able to freely reach the turn signal.

 

[DrPizza]

Instead of needlessly turning many cases of traffic enforcement into revenue generating for the state, it'd be nice if more officers would occasionally follow the amber lamps and ticket idiots who aren't intelligent enough to yield the right of way.

 

[FallenHero]

Instead of needlessly turning many cases of traffic enforcement into revenue generating for the state, it'd be nice if more officers would occasionally follow the amber lamps and ticket idiots who aren't intelligent enough to yield the right of way.

There are actually a surprising number of us in our town that do that. However, as dumb as alot of drivers are, they can see a cop near and suddenly they do the right thing. Most I get people for is following too close to an emergency vehicle.