WuLabsWuTecH
Forum Deputy Chief
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I just saw this happen today when driving home from the library.
A Medic and a flycar are coming hot down a 4 lane street with a left turn lane (5 lanes in total).
3 lanes in the same direction of travel as the Medic are occupied at a red light. Medic crosses over, goes to "wail," sounds horn through intersection. Crosses back, continues on its way. No problem.
Very close behind it the flycar changes to "hyper" crosses over, and ends up almost on the left sidewalk narrowly avoiding the car in the first left turn lane turning left.
What went wrong?!
So the problem was multi faceted (as are most things that cause accidents, very seldom does one thing going wrong cause an accident)
Problem 1 was that the green left arrow came on while the medic was clearing the intersection.
Problem 2 is what I want to really address though.
The medic I noticed, had high sirens, but also low sirens. When it came closer to me, all I heard were the low tones since it was so much louder than the high ones. Also, I didn't hear the flycar's sirens until it was just abeam of me since the medic's low tones drown out the flycar's high tones. (The flycar did not have low tones) The medic and fly car did everything right in respect to the fact that they used two different sirens (yelp and hyper) to go through the intersection. What I think happened, was that the first car saw the medic but not the flycar since the flycar would have still been farther back, and when the medic cleared and he heard the high tones fade into the distance, he went to turn left as the low tones were still being heard by him and were still drowning out the high tones of the smaller, quieter flycar.
In any case, I don't know of these sirens, and perhaps they don't exist that frequently, but please try to be careful out there on the roads. Always assume that they have not seen you. And if your department has these sirens, keep a longer following distance between you and the apparatus in front of you.
This has been a public service announcement from WUTV.
A Medic and a flycar are coming hot down a 4 lane street with a left turn lane (5 lanes in total).
3 lanes in the same direction of travel as the Medic are occupied at a red light. Medic crosses over, goes to "wail," sounds horn through intersection. Crosses back, continues on its way. No problem.
Very close behind it the flycar changes to "hyper" crosses over, and ends up almost on the left sidewalk narrowly avoiding the car in the first left turn lane turning left.
What went wrong?!
So the problem was multi faceted (as are most things that cause accidents, very seldom does one thing going wrong cause an accident)
Problem 1 was that the green left arrow came on while the medic was clearing the intersection.
Problem 2 is what I want to really address though.
The medic I noticed, had high sirens, but also low sirens. When it came closer to me, all I heard were the low tones since it was so much louder than the high ones. Also, I didn't hear the flycar's sirens until it was just abeam of me since the medic's low tones drown out the flycar's high tones. (The flycar did not have low tones) The medic and fly car did everything right in respect to the fact that they used two different sirens (yelp and hyper) to go through the intersection. What I think happened, was that the first car saw the medic but not the flycar since the flycar would have still been farther back, and when the medic cleared and he heard the high tones fade into the distance, he went to turn left as the low tones were still being heard by him and were still drowning out the high tones of the smaller, quieter flycar.
In any case, I don't know of these sirens, and perhaps they don't exist that frequently, but please try to be careful out there on the roads. Always assume that they have not seen you. And if your department has these sirens, keep a longer following distance between you and the apparatus in front of you.
This has been a public service announcement from WUTV.