The barking Dalmatians that once warned pedestrians to clear a path ahead of horse-drawn carriages with firefighting equipment have long since been replaced with ear-piercing sirens that — with their yelps, wails, chirps, whoops and warbles — can sound like an over-caffeinated R2-D2.
But for all the noise they create and attention they draw, sirens, combined with emergency lights and speeding, can be a force multiplier for more harm than good, some experts said.
Emergency drivers are more likely to engage in risky behavior when they use lights and sirens, they say. Also, other drivers sometimes respond in unpredictable ways, such as stopping right in front of an emergency vehicle instead of pulling out of the way.
Further, the use of lights and sirens has been shown to have little bearing on patient outcomes. More than a dozen studies have estimated that lights-and-sirens responses shaved 42 seconds to three minutes off the time of a trip to the scene of a call.
When emergency medical responses were evaluated in Salt Lake City in the 1990s, the difference between “hot” calls (lights and sirens on) and “cold” ones (no lights or sirens) amounted to an average of 26 seconds, said Dr. Jeff J. Clawson, founder of the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch in Salt Lake City.
“Most of the things that are time-dependent are a very tiny minority of the E.M.S. calls,” said Dr. Douglas F. Kupas, E.M.S. medical director for Geisinger E.M.S. in central Pennsylvania, noting that such responses are generally critical only in cardiac arrest calls. Yet, the average overall use of lights and sirens in E.M.S. calls nationally from 2010 through 2015 was as high as 77.5 percent, according to a report he wrote.
Sirens can be useful in certain situations, such as getting through red lights or stop signs, but they can be harmful to responders, who can suffer premature hearing loss, and to patients, who can be stressed by the noise.
And then there is the risk of accidents. A study of ambulance crashes by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that an average of 4,500 such accidents occurred annually from 1992 to 2011, resulting in an average of 33 deaths and injuries to 2,600 people each year.
Dr. Clawson said the overuse of lights and sirens posed a “public health dilemma.”
Read more at Dnyuz.
{Matzav.com}
What? What did you say?
This discussion is important and overdue.
Similarly, certain allowances given to ambulances in some places, e.g. allowing to them to idle, running their engines spewing toxic fumes incessantly, even while parked for extended periods, should also be re-examined. Sometimes these ambulances are not even providing emergency services, they just transport elderly or handicapped people, not necessarily in life-threatening situations.
This is so stupid it cant be overstated. Heck with these morons and their dumb studies. We see with our own eyes EVERY DAY the fact that sirens are effective, what do they want? Emergency to wait by red lights? Morons!
And of their own admission lights and sirens shave “42 seconds to 3 MINUTES” off response times.
Is 3 minutes not important for, say, a choking victim r”l?! What about 42 seconds?
The “music” by chassunas is 100 times worse. It has become deafening. Talk about rotzchim.
What is the point of this?