Today there seem to be a lot of emergencies, and as I live a few blocks from the fire station I often hear them passing by my house. I noticed yesterday that the sirens were no longer the ones that gradually changed in pitch from a lower note to a higher one, the ones I usually hear here in the states.
Now they’re the type I associate with England and other European countries- short low note alternating with a short high note.
So what’s up? Is this happening elsewhere, or just here? Is there a difference between the two siren types, e.g. one is better heard at greater distances?
Come to think of it that might not be a bad idea…:dubious:
Police use one siren and Emergency vehicles use another…or even a separate one for Ambulances too.
That way drivers know what to look for, rather than some generic sound for all.
I think they kinda do that now with the police, when they hit a cross street at a red light they put on that twitter sound thing to get across…to their walmart shopping or some other non-emergency thing.:rolleyes:
In my experience, most emergency vehicles have a variety of siren tones. In Denver, our ambulances have 4 choices:
Wail- the standard “U.S.” siren tone
Yelp- same as wail, but changes faster
Phaser- higher pitched and changing quickly (on the link it’s called piercer)
Hi-Lo- the European style you mentioned above
You can hear all of these at Whelen’s website here
When I’m driving, I generally keep it on wail, then change it to yelp, then phaser as I’m approaching an intersection. If I’m driving downtown where there’s a ton of traffic lights, I’ll use the Hi-Lo so I don’t have to change it repeatedly. I’m kind of partial to the Hi-Los, I think it gets peoples attention a little better since they’re not expecting it as much.
Hmm. I do live downtown, so maybe they’ve started using the Hi-Los so they don’t have to change it at intersections so frequently. I hadn’t thought about that, they do change the sirens as they approach intersections.
That is the theory, and that’s why (I think) they changed the sirens here in England. But I find the new sirens impossible. You can hear them from too far away. I also can’t tell at all which direction it’s coming from most of the time, so I’m peering around for it in case I need to move when it’s not even in sight, and I certainly can’t tell which way they’re going. I hate them. Canvassing friends, a lot of people seem to have the same problems.
They didn’t ‘change’ the sirens, the police have a similar choice as St. Urho describes, and it makes sense to have both a moderately loud one and and ear-piercing wail, along with lights which vary from just flashing blue through to high-power strobes. Fire engines seem to mostly stick to two-tone sirens, although the ones at my local station use a brief stab of a wail as they pull out, directly into a narrow & twisting network of streets. (They also have the option of the ‘get the fuck out of my way NOW’ foghorn.)
I once was told by a California paramedic that hi-lo sirens are illegal in California. However, I’ve never been able to find a reference to this in any official document. Does anyone know if this is true, and why?
Well, they certainly did change the sirens. They started off with little jangly bells, apart from anything else! But they changed from a recognisably British “nee naw nee naw” sound as standard in this country to the greater range of the new sirens. I’m just looking for when they did that. It was within my lifetime because I remember the old ones and how weird it was when the new ones came in.
While driving in Manhattan last week, I heard a the European siren coming from a police car and I hadn’t recalled ever hearing that in NYC before. Here’s an article in the NY Times explaining that officers get to pick what siren they’d like to use at any given time. You can listen to the different choices here.
There’s also a siren on some British ambulances that interjects a burst of static (it’s supposedly easier to work out which direction the ambulance is coming from). IME, it’s pretty rare to hear it, though.
