Drive Cams!

It's a real shame that people think union's are in place to "protect" from manangment. It must only be a coincidence that I work for the highest paid service with the best benefits, with the least amount of employee turnover in most of western PA.
 
If you don't need protection from management, why have unions in the first place?
 
Stay on topic...if you want to talk about EMS unions, start your own thread.
 
they have their pluses and minuses. I like the fact they can also be manually activated within the cab. For example we caught a hit and run in front of us.
 
We have road safety, GPS, and drive cams on our rigs...
 
At my old company we had one unit that had one (side note: unit was also a mod, old, and the only Horton brand ambulance which could also contribute to the lack of use by most providers) as a test and it was in better condition than some of the units half her age. As a provider and not management, I say deploy it in half the fleet. The morons can sit there and screw around and destroy the units without drive cams and leave the drive cam units to us professionals.
 
We have the RoadSafe in every truck, management can always be watching us. We have GPS and everything. From their computer, they can see where we are, how fast we are going, are we using lights and siren, etc etc.... they know our every move:unsure: haha

We had an incident last fall and the RoadSafe saved the drivers butt. Management could see how fast he was going, when and how much break he applied, where the stearing wheel was, list goes on and on.... and not just during the incident, but for the entire trip. They studied it, and found that he did all that he could. They saw that he took it off cruise, reduced speed, when he first noticed road conditions getting bad.

I think the Cams would be nice to have... so you not only read what happened, but to see it too.
 
We have drive cams in all our trucks which record for ten seconds when set off and the previous ten seconds before the incident. Can either work for or against you.
 
We have drive cams here in our ambulances and they are wi-fi enabled. If the camera is set off it stores what it recorded until we pull up near the station. It will then wireless upload the video from the camera and send it to the supervisor. It then resets itself. This only take a few seconds. We have 2 antennas mounted on the back of the station. Our old cameras had the usb port where it had to be plug into a computer and downloaded that way.
 
1. Can someone provide links of the cams used in your trucks?

2. Can someone provide a link for RoadSafe?

edit: It looks like its actually called Road Safety. I guess this is it. http://www.roadsafety.com/emergency.php

3. Does anyone have cameras located in the back of units that can manually be turned on for the safety of the EMT?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
www.drivecam.com

I am a supervisor who routinely watches DriveCam and who's butt has been saved by having the Drive Cam recording. We've also documented road-side assaults, hit and runs, psychiatric patients attacking our attendant, etc. I can tell you that we also discipline based on videos - especially for dangerous traffic violations and failure to wear seat belts - and it greatly increases safe driving and compliance with seat belt use.

As far as privacy, yes our supervisors see all of the tapes, but we delete them if they are of no value as far as above. I don't really care about the personal lives and discussions had on tape unless you are talking about homicide, suicide, a clinical error, etc.

We can correlate DriveCam to our MDT data including GPS, vehicle speed, etc. but do not have Road Safety units.

The DriveCams are programmable to whatever your service wants as far as G-forces required to activate, recording time, etc. Ours records for 15 seconds - 7.5 before and after. They work as described above by having a constantly "rolling" tape. Our automatically sync via WiFi when pulling into the station, but you can also manually pull the "tapes" via USB connection.

Road Safety is a great device for safe driving "reminders" and enforcement. However, it won't document who's at fault in an accident or incident like DriveCam will.

Any questions about it, you can PM me or post here.
 
reaper said:
Well, You need to understand that drivecam is not a dash camera. It does not record all the time, just when it is set off.
Click to expand...

just a correction: DashCams on Police Vehicles are turned on whenever they turn on their Lights (code 3). it records to a DVD recorder in the back of the vehicle. The Officer is also Hooked up with microphones so the sound turns on as well. (thats why in police shows you hear them soo well)


Anyways the service i did my ridealong with had DriveCams, and they would turn on every time we went over a speedbump to a bumpy road. they are usefull though for insurance purposes im sure
 
MusicMedic said:
they are usefull though for insurance purposes im sure
Click to expand...

This is the main reason why most EMS agencies are beginning to use drive cams and road safety and other similar devices.. its all about the almighty dollar.

I work for a County EMS Dept, and I dont see us getting these anytime soon. Everything recorded on the drive cams would in turn become public record.. and be very easy to obtain thru a FOIA request by the local media. Can you imagine if you're running code three and you make an offhanded comment about a driver being a "F***ING moron" and the news media got ahold of that?

Works for some agencies im sure, but I think it would not be a smart investment for my agency.

Of course, I need to add a disclaimer that my thoughts and comments do not, by any stretch of the imagination, represent the thoughts and opinions of the Administration of my agency.
 
FLEMTP said:
This is the main reason why most EMS agencies are beginning to use drive cams and road safety and other similar devices.. its all about the almighty dollar.

I work for a County EMS Dept, and I dont see us getting these anytime soon. Everything recorded on the drive cams would in turn become public record.. and be very easy to obtain thru a FOIA request by the local media. Can you imagine if you're running code three and you make an offhanded comment about a driver being a "F***ING moron" and the news media got ahold of that?

Works for some agencies im sure, but I think it would not be a smart investment for my agency.

Of course, I need to add a disclaimer that my thoughts and comments do not, by any stretch of the imagination, represent the thoughts and opinions of the Administration of my agency.
Click to expand...


We had them, at a county agency in FL. Not everything that is recorded is kept. Only reckless driving or accidents are stored for later use. All others are deleted.

County agencies are the biggest one that need them. They will save your agency from lawsuits that would otherwise be hard to prove. We had 4 of them thrown out before even reaching trial, just because we had video evidence of what happened. That paid for the Drive cams in full!

I think every county agency should have them. They also bring your emloyees inline with their driving. The BS driving stops, which cuts your maintainace costs.
 
reaper said:
We had them, at a county agency in FL. Not everything that is recorded is kept. Only reckless driving or accidents are stored for later use. All others are deleted.

County agencies are the biggest one that need them. They will save your agency from lawsuits that would otherwise be hard to prove. We had 4 of them thrown out before even reaching trial, just because we had video evidence of what happened. That paid for the Drive cams in full!

I think every county agency should have them. They also bring your emloyees inline with their driving. The BS driving stops, which cuts your maintainace costs.
Click to expand...

Which county agency did you work at? you can PM me if you're prefer.. im curious to know how that worked out for them. Drivecams also wouldnt really save us any money in the long run, because IIRC our county is self insured.
 
I worked for Leon County (Tallahassee). The drive cams worked great for us. Maintainance costs lowered. We to were self insured. It still saved tons of money.

Case in point.

Had an ambulance hit head on, on a two lane road. They were transporting routine and at speed limit. Driver crossed into their lane on a curve and hit them, with no time to respond. Drive cam showed them in the curve and the car came out of no where. DRivers reaction was "oh ", no time to finish his phrase.

Other driver tried to sue. Stated that ambulance was speeding and had L/S on and crossed lanes. Drive cam showed ambulance at 30 mph, no L/S and driver with both hands on wheel. He never crossed the line. Cam showed other driver come around corner in their lane at a high rate of speed.

County lawyer walked in to the deposition, slapped a copy of tape on table and walked out. The suit was dropped next day and she had to pay 100k for a totaled ambulance.
Lucky the pt or medics were not injured.

That is one of four cases that the camera has saved them from any suit. Several other times were where the crews have used them to record other accidents or altercations. They are well worth the money and I think every county should run them.

The black boxes on the other hand, should be outlawed. they do nothing but cause problems and headachs.
 
reaper said:
The black boxes on the other hand, should be outlawed. they do nothing but cause problems and headaches.
Click to expand...

Umm... care to elaborate?

We already have blackboxes and are now introducing active driver feedback systems that will also track driver performance. I have my concerns with these but I'm interested to see how they'll be utilized.
 
reaper said:
I worked for Leon County (Tallahassee). The drive cams worked great for us. Maintainance costs lowered. We to were self insured. It still saved tons of money.

Case in point.

Had an ambulance hit head on, on a two lane road. They were transporting routine and at speed limit. Driver crossed into their lane on a curve and hit them, with no time to respond. Drive cam showed them in the curve and the car came out of no where. DRivers reaction was "oh ", no time to finish his phrase.

Other driver tried to sue. Stated that ambulance was speeding and had L/S on and crossed lanes. Drive cam showed ambulance at 30 mph, no L/S and driver with both hands on wheel. He never crossed the line. Cam showed other driver come around corner in their lane at a high rate of speed.

County lawyer walked in to the deposition, slapped a copy of tape on table and walked out. The suit was dropped next day and she had to pay 100k for a totaled ambulance.
Lucky the pt or medics were not injured.

That is one of four cases that the camera has saved them from any suit. Several other times were where the crews have used them to record other accidents or altercations. They are well worth the money and I think every county should run them.

The black boxes on the other hand, should be outlawed. they do nothing but cause problems and headachs.
Click to expand...

I can see your point. I appreciate the insight. I will bring the idea of a drivecam up to our adminstration and cite Leon County as a county ran EMS agency that did benefit from them.

Our agency is big on assessing how tools like the drive cam or various different types of software (ePCR, CAD, logistical, etc) has worked in other areas prior to implementing them with our agency.

If it can safe money in the long term or the short term for that matter, I'm sure its worth looking at!

Thank you again!
 
I ride for a collegiate ALS 24/7 agency in New York. Fortunately we've never been the lucky winners of any legal issues that I know of to date, and we don't run any cameras/monitoring systems. The few vehicle incidents we've had were relatively minor, wheel vs. curb (the curbs are sharp and granite, you touch one and POP), back bumper vs a tree at like 2mph, etc.

For a large county or city, agency, I'd actually HOPE they had the cameras assuming they were used for the right reasons, not for babysitting the crew.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top