Lights and Sirens with Excessive Speeds

Have you ever been driving through an intersection with you suddenly hear sirens blaring and in the corner of your eye you see a flashing lightbar? I'm sure this has happened on a few occasions to most of you reading this. And most of the time this happens its not big deal. Either you continue through the intersection or you stop to let the police car (or any emergency vehicle) go by.

Lets take a look at this situation from the police officer's (or any public safety responder's) point of view. You're responding to an emergency with your lights on and about to come up on an intersection, you activate your siren. Do you slow down? Do you come to a stop before entering the intersection? That car doesn't stop for you. So you better stop for it!

Its very important to have a standard lights and siren approach. It seems unfair to the public for police cars to respond to an emergency using excessive speeds. But what defines excessive speeds? Does your city, state, town or county have a maximum speed that you can drive while responding to an emergency? Are you required to come to a stop when approaching an intersection that has a stop sign or red light? At what point are you required to activate your siren?

While working EMS, I witnessed a near crash of two police cars that were both responding to the same emergency. The two police cars approached the intersection at the same time and nearly collided. What if there had been a pedestrian crossing the road?

Lights and sirens are a tool used to make response times quicker. Unfortunately, once they are activated, there seems to be an adrenaline surge which causes the driver to hit the pedal a bit harder.

Please keep the roads safe and protect yourselves while saving others.

(Please note that this article geared towards all public safety personnel and not specifically towards police officers)