Emergency Lights on a Private Vehicle

[Jena]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering about personal vehicle emergency lights.
I've been on a department in South Dakota for about 6 months now and I know they allow them but I am unsure of what colors are allowed. I am also curious what is allowed in other states.
Also, do you think they are necessary/helpful? I know that they don't always help you to arrive anywhere faster but in a college town could it be helpful? At least to keep college students from stepping onto the street while you are responding? We don't have emergent calls very often we actually had our first code a few nights ago since I joined the department so, knowing this could it be beneficial?

 

[EpiEMS]

Perhaps my favorite point to raise: Even if you *do* arrive faster with lights and sirens (which is questionable), does it make (enough of) a difference (given the increased risk)? I would say no - despite evidence that hot responses are faster (e.g. Ho 2001), there is little evidence that fast response makes a difference (certainly for the bulk of patients, including those who are EMD'ed as "priority", e.g. Blackwell 2002 and Blanchard 2012), and there is ample evidence that EMS use of lights & sirens increases risk.

Could POV lights be helpful? Maybe, but probably not from a clinical perspective...unless you're only using them for really truly time sensitive calls (VF/VT Arrest, anaphylaxis, and severe hemorrhage amenable to intervention) where they speed up critical interventions.

Talk to your service director about the practical implications of the statute, perhaps?

 

[DesertMedic66]

You also will have to check with your insurance company. If you are using your vehicle for work and have lights on it there is a very good chance your insurance company will not cover anything if you get into an accident.

The general consensus on the forum is usually “no it’s not a good idea”. It’s only going to put you at more risk and increase your liability. The job is already dangerous enough, why increase the risks.

 

[hometownmedic5]

If you think lights will get you to a scene appreciably faster, or that they will prevent pedestrians or other cars from doing stupid things that will impede your progress, then you don't have enough experience in this business to understand the concept.

If you just want to look cool, then you don't have the maturity to properly operate an emergency vehicle.

In short, I'm steadfastly against lighting a POV, not just for the reasons I stated but also, and primarily, for the reason Desert stated. If you waffle a pedestrian(or even get into a minor fender bender) while responding in your POV, your insurance company is going to drop you like a hot rock and you're completely and totally effed forever. Is getting Nana off the floor or getting to some drunken nit with 1 minute quicker worth that?

As a general rule, I think eliminating lights on both marked agency owned apparatus and POVs would result in very little demonstrable degradation in pt care or survivability(and there's plenty of well conducted, peer reviewed research to support this) but as it stands that's a dog that won't hunt.

You do you, just be aware of the consequences of your decisions and the consequences thereunto pertaining.

 

[DrParasite]

http://www.extremetacticaldynamics.com/knowledge-base/state-statutes/south-dakota/

 

[hometownmedic5]

Wow. That last sentence really went off the rails...

 

[GMCmedic]

Most of my thoughts on the subject have already been stated.

I do have blue lights on my POV for the fire department. I ONLY use them when en route to station for a structure fire because time is sensitive. I never use them on medical calls.

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[hometownmedic5]

Most of my thoughts on the subject have already been stated.

I do have blue lights on my POV for the fire department. I ONLY use them when en route to station for a structure fire because time is sensitive. I never use them on medical calls.

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Nonsense. If everybody is out of the building, then the rapidity of the response is of minimal value, especially as one person in a POV with no hose, no water, no air and no direct ability to do much of anything. If there are still occupants inside, what are you going to do by yourself?

The idea that fires are more critical than medicals is as without merit as the idea that a person flying across town with their twinklies going is going to save the day. POV lights shouldn't be a thing in my opinion; but then again I also believe that call fire and EMS shouldn't be either.

As a general note on the topic, every time you "light the cherries" as some obnoxious poster once wrote here, spend a second in your mind composing your testimony. Try to think what it will be like in court trying to explain how saving 1 minute to get to a call was worth you creaming a bicyclist or going head on with a family in a corrola.

 

[GMCmedic]

Nonsense. If everybody is out of the building, then the rapidity of the response is of minimal value, especially as one person in a POV with no hose, no water, no air and no direct ability to do much of anything. If there are still occupants inside, what are you going to do by yourself?

The idea that fires are more critical than medicals is as without merit as the idea that a person flying across town with their twinklies going is going to save the day. POV lights shouldn't be a thing in my opinion; but then again I also believe that call fire and EMS shouldn't be either.

As a general note on the topic, every time you "light the cherries" as some obnoxious poster once wrote here, spend a second in your mind composing your testimony. Try to think what it will be like in court trying to explain how saving 1 minute to get to a call was worth you creaming a bicyclist or going head on with a family in a corrola.

1. You live your life responding to what a dispatcher told you. How often are they wrong?

2. I said using lights TO STATION. Its absolutely useless to go direct to a structure fire unless you're a chief officer giving a size up.

3. Don't assume I don't take using those lights seriously (as I said in my original post, Everything had already been said, including that) I'm well aware of the risk I assume, and its virtually the same risk I assume every day at work.

4. Why would I needlessly run POV lights to a medical call when the ALS ambulance will beat me there.


ETA: I get it. I used to hate the blue light guys for driving 14 different POVs to scene (my apartment doesnt do that).


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[Alan L Serve]

POV lights are required for my service and extremely useful when trying to get to the scene of a MVC.

 

[DrParasite]

I do have blue lights on my POV for the fire department. I ONLY use them when en route to station for a structure fire because time is sensitive. I never use them on medical calls.

I used to only use mine on structure fires or rescue assignments (pin jobs, overturned vehicles, etc). i would rarely respond when off today for a medical call, as our on duty personnel handle single company responses without additional resources.

1. You live your life responding to what a dispatcher told you. How often are they wrong?

well, it depends on how frequently the caller gives them bad information. some are worse than others.

4. Why would I needlessly run POV lights to a medical call when the ALS ambulance will beat me there.

why would you even on on a medical calls (as a routine matter, not when special requested) when the ALS ambulance was going to beat you there anyway? doesn't make sense to have a first responder who never arrives first. [/QUOTE]

I'm not against lights on your POV, but I am against driving like an A hole (in POV or in a dept vehicle) just because you have lights on in your car.

 

[GMCmedic]

I used to only use mine on structure fires or rescue assignments (pin jobs, overturned vehicles, etc). i would rarely respond when off today for a medical call, as our on duty personnel handle single company responses without additional resources.well, it depends on how frequently the caller gives them bad information. some are worse than others.why would you even on on a medical calls (as a routine matter, not when special requested) when the ALS ambulance was going to beat you there anyway? doesn't make sense to have a first responder who never arrives first.

I'm not against lights on your POV, but I am against driving like an A hole (in POV or in a dept vehicle) just because you have lights on in your car.[/QUOTE]

We only respond to certain medical calls. Accidents with unknown or confirmed injury, unconscious, random trauma if it sounds bad, known morbidly obese patients, anything dispatch randomly sends us on for no logical reason. Only a small portion of our area even calls for ambulances. Even if we staffed our station (hard to stay motivated to do so as a volunteer when we run 400 calls a year), the ambulance is staffed at our station so we would leave at the same time ( if they are available).

More often then not were disregarded on medical calls before we even roll a truck, hence why I do not use lights

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[johnrsemt]

If they were available the only time I would use them was to park at the scene (and around here people respond straight to the scene or close to it due to distances involved) couple of people live 20 + miles from the Fire Station; they have their personal gear in the POV (Turnout gear, and Wildland Gear) and a jump bag.
Emergency lights at the scene to let people know there is a problem and to slow down (and most people do slow down out here in the sticks) help.

 

[NPO]

I REALLY hate the "lights don't get you there faster" argument.

For rural America, sure. And in fact, probably. But for urban EMS/Fire, if you want to be at the scene of an emergency (keyword) in any sense of time, you need them.

I think more judicious use of them (more like, better EMD protocols) would be better.

I recently left a very busy urban 911 system where nearly everything was dispatched code 3. Now I'm working in a rural setting and our dispatchers use the same EMD system, but Nealy half of our calls are downgraded code 2 at dispatch.

To be clear, I'm not faulting dispatchers, I'm faulting the system.

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[NomadicMedic]

How many times has getting there a minute sooner made any clinical difference?

 

[NPO]

How many times has getting there a minute sooner made any clinical difference?

I'm not talking about a minute. I'm talking about 5-10.

Next time you arrive on scene of a true difficult breathing, cardiac arrest, or active labor, just stand there for 5 minutes and watch your patient wish you were doing something.

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[DesertMedic66]

How many times has getting there a minute sooner made any clinical difference?

This.

Also is responding lights and sirens to everything to save a little time worth it in a risk/benefit scenario?

 

[NPO]

This.

Also is responding lights and sirens to everything to save a little time worth it in a risk/benefit scenario?

Refer back to my caviatt about running code 3.
Realistically we could respond to 20-25% of calls code 3 and catch most true emergencies.

(I recognize that 20-25% of calls aren't emergencies. But you have to have overhead.)

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[DesertMedic66]

I'm not talking about a minute. I'm talking about 5-10.

Next time you arrive on scene of a true difficult breathing, cardiac arrest, or active labor, just stand there for 5 minutes and watch your patient wish you were doing something.

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Don’t know if I would use active labor as justification for lights and sirens considering babies have been delivered for centuries before EMS and modern medicine was created and many women still do home births without involving 911.

 

[NPO]

Don’t know if I would use active labor as justification for lights and sirens considering babies have been delivered for centuries before EMS and modern medicine was created and many women still do home births without involving 911.

Okay, that I'll give you. But she's gonna be angry when you arrive 10 minutes after the baby was born [emoji23]

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