Somewhat educated guess: that’s an emergency vehicle doing the equivalent of honking its horn. It may be signalling to other vehicles (or pedestrians) to get out of the way so it can get to the emergency entrance, or to get out of the way as it leaves on an emergency call. Depending on sightlines, it may be signalling an actual vehicle or pedestrian that’s in the way, or it may be doing a pre-emptive alert to anyone that might be approaching that an emergency vehicle is entering/exiting.
It’s also possible that it’s an emergency vehicle that’s arriving and is signalling to the emergency room personnel, “Hey, I’m here with a emergency case, someone get out here and help me with this critical care patient.”
They might also simply be doing a systems test at the beginning of a run.
Or a combination of the above.
In any case, it seems pretty unlikely to me that it’s someone just playing around with their siren/PA system.
Similar to gdave’s explanation, fire trucks hereabouts seem to use the air horn to alert crossing traffic when approaching a red light. Ambulances, which don’t have air horns, use a different “warbling” sound for the same effect.
Hmm, that makes sense. Sometimes it goes on for a few minutes, though.
That’s a sensible answer, but I don’t think it’s the case. This hospital doesn’t do medical stuff per se. It’s for mentally unstable people. It would make sense elsewhere, though. Maybe they’re entertaining a visitor or kids. There is a child care center on grounds.
Speculation, but what I see in my area is cops and ambulances chirping the siren when they are blowing through an intersection with little to no traffic. Instead of running the siren full out they just give it a little bump as they move through the intersection.
Now, whether this is warranted is open to interpretation. More often than not the driver doing so is not on a call but simply doesn’t feel like waiting at the intersection so they pop on the cherries for a second to cover their asses when they run the light. Of course, this is against policy in most jurisdictions.
They have radios for that. When I was driving an ambulance at my last duty station in the navy, if the case was too serious for our tiny clinic we’d drive them to the regional hospital about thirty miles away. In our case, the base would phone ER at the hospital to let them know we were coming.
The hospital requested we kill the siren five blocks from the place to avoid upsetting other patients in the hospital. In any event, once we got out of the tiny town (Winter Harbor, ME) and on US 1, traffic was light enough we’d use just lights unless we came up behind someone.
Retired EMT and ambulance driver chiming in. I can only address the first few.
In our rigs ( fairly modern), the sirens are turned on and off manually. They cut when the engine is turned off. At least in ours, they WILL still be going when the rig is put into Park. One…learns…quickly to kill the siren at the right moment. Or- and this is especially delicate for middle of the night calls- to turn it ON at the right moment.
At least in our rigs, yes. The siren will work- as will all lights- if the engine is turned on.
No clue. Ours are insanely loud.
Interesting. When I was driving/ riding ( that ended in 2004 ), we used the standard USA selection of siren calls and “yelps” ( the frantic fast whooping that REALLY gets your attention ). A few years ago in New York City I started hearing ambulances using the European standard tones. No clue why. I do not believe NYPD or FDNY Fire trucks ever run those tones.
