I strongly oppose a siren for their pet ambulance. In my opinion, they shouldn’t have lights, either. Regular ambulances respond/transport emergent (with lights and sirens) far too often as it is.
EMS personnel are at a very high risk of injury or death from vehicle accidents.
Emergent driving is a common denominator in most fatal ambulance accidents.
Emergent driving also places the public at risk. There is an increased risk not only of being involved in a crash with the ambulance, but also with other vehicles. I can’t find any studies on this, unfortunately, but I’ve seen far too many crashes where someone who stops for the ambulance gets hit by someone who doesn’t.
I think, that given all these factors, having lights and siren authorized for a pet ambulance is indefensible- it will place both the operators and the public at too high a risk. What do you think?
I agree. I love animals, really (for dinner and for companionship), but there’s not a single animal out there worth putting a human into additional danger for. (And, honestly, few humans really worth putting other humans into danger for.) As you say in the OP, having an emergency vehicle with lights and sirens and not obeying ordinary traffic laws puts people (in the emergency vehicle and out of it) into danger.
Nay. Lights and sirens put people at (slightly increased) risk, but for a greater likelihood of saving people’s health and lives. So the benefit outweighs the risk there, overall.
But the general population should not be put at greater risk for an animal’s benefit.
I think they probably already take risks when driving the animals. I know my wife did when we thought our pet was dying. If that’s the case, isn’t the siren/lights pacage for safety? I eman, if they’re already driving like a human ambulance? Wouldn’t it be better to regulate/monitor their speed and driving (or at least their training for such) than just deny them lights?
edited for clarity: It seems like you’re conflating two issues…“driving like an ambulance” (what you call “emergent” driving) and having the lights/siren. I’m not sure the two always go hand-in-hand.
I would agree if it weren’t for the fact that I suspect sirens and lights would make them drive far more recklessly.
If they were actually driving just as recklessly as a regular ambulance, I would suggest the appropriate solution is to have the police pull them over and issue them citations and fines until they learn their lesson. But no, I think sirens and lights will just make it worse. After all, the logical extension of this is to hand out sirens and lights to everyone who thinks they deserve to get from A to B faster than the law allows. Ambulances, fire engines and police cars are excluded from the rules because they’re involved in protecting human lives. Pets are great and all, but they’re not humans.
I appreciate how people love their pets and I’d probably drive faster than I should if I thought my dog’s life was at stake - I am not pretending to be a saint - but this is just asking for trouble.
Well, that, and it would make OTHERS drive far more recklessly. You see idiots all the time who are rattled by the sound of a siren - their heads start swiveling to locate it and they do stupid erratic things to get out of the way.
As QtM says, it’s worth it, arguably, to save a human’s life. But how would you like it if someone dented your fender in a halfwitted attempt to get out of the way of an “ambulance” carrying a ferret?
Well, they shouldn’t be taking risks driving now, let alone with lights and siren. I would argue that the best way to regulate and monitor their speed is to take away the lights and siren and make them drive like everyone else.
I’m not following this part- can you clarify what you think the difference is?
Clawson and Dernocoeur, who really did write the book on emergency medical dispatch, suggest that “…total annual emergency medical vehicle collisions and less evident wake effect collisions exceed 50,000.” Moreover, studies tend to show that “hot” response, depending on location, saves far less time than one might expect. The trend now is actually to try to decrease the need for automotive speed, by providing better instructions to civilians who call 911, increasing the scope of first responders, and better categorizing the types of complaints that generate emergency response (recognizing, for example, that while seconds may make a difference to someone who has just suffered, say, a stroke, there’s usually no reason to blow through a busy intersection for the sake of a broken leg).
As much fun as it might be for Nell and Larry to paint Pet-Knappers on the side of their Explorer and stomp on the gas, the idea just screams “recipe for disaster.” Apparently they’re not part of any municipal, county or state public safety organization - for the state to sanction the kind of driving they want to do, no matter the cause, would be irresponsible. A cursory glance indicates that Michigan has animal control/animal services that are part of the public service apparatus, and I doubt if they are equipped with lights and sirens.
The Knapps should not get a siren: if I could, I’d take their flashers away too.
Leaving the pet/human issue aside, are vet services even at the level where such an intervention really even makes sense anyhow?
As in this sounds more like a great way to drum up business ‘we really care about your pets’ than something necessarily useful anyhow. How many pet deaths could really be saved by a few extra minutes anyway?
I can bearly stand this foalish idea. There are already enough people ought there driving like animals. The snakes and weasels who came up with this plan are as dumb as can bee. The accidents that could result from this would be cat-astrophic. This proposal should be taken out back and shot like an old dog.
I say that vets should have at least the lights. If the argument is, what if they crash into an ambulance, then that can be applied to ambulances having lights and sirens. As two ambulances on different calls can crash, if driven by people that don’t pay attention. We are the ones that put the animals in those situations, and often like people, they have only moments to spare. So I say, why not, give a reason they shouldn’t get the care they need.
Idk, how many human lives would be spared with such a time gap? I guess with this logic, human ambulances are kind of a waste too, as really, how often do those happen.
I mean seriously, there are a lot of times, as frequent as people, that animals only have moments to spare. Then die due to them not being able to make it in time.
How many pet lives would be saved? Very, very few. Currently EMS can provide no actual proof that running lights and siren has ever saved a human life, whereas the documentation of increased risk of collision is quite solid.
One study (I will try to provide a cite as soon as I have gotten my youngest doper off to school) showed that the average time saved by lights and siren use was somewhere around 40 seconds.
Are we really prepared to increase the risk to other motorists to save 40 seconds in the transportation of a pet ?
