I'll begin by stating quite clearly that here in Oz, it has been a national law since the early 70's for every person (Including emergency responders) to wear a seat belt, so I'm at a loss to understand the mentality of some.....

Having said that, here's my random rant for the day!


What are we coming to?

Today a little switch in the back of mind flicked into the on position, or was that the p**sed off position?

What have we come to? We need to sign a pledge to say that we'll be good people and do what's SAFE?

Forget what's right, what's wrong, what's legal and so on and so on.

We're talking about what's safe. Nothing more!

Do we wear our turn out gear everytime we go into a burning building? Of course we do. Did we sign a pledge to say that we'd do that? No. Why do we need to sign a pledge to say that we will for this?

As I've said in a couple of my rants, we as emergency responders have seen the results of not wearing seatbelts- even 1 is too many. The injuries are horrific for those that survice, as rare as that may be.

Oh, that's right- I forgot. We put that uniform on and we're invincible. Nothing can hurt us. Ever.

Well that's bullsh*t!

And lets be realistic- there's over 14000 members on this site, over 100,000 on Firehouse and countles other such websites. And yet only a few hundred have signed- we're p**sing in the wind here peoples. Even if you got all 100000 plus to sign, it's still only scratching the surface of the total number of emergency service responders.

It stuns me that we need to educate responders of these obvious dangers.

I mean we know we don't place a spreader between us and the door we're trying to pop (don't we?) and we know we don't stop a running chainsaw with our leg (don't we?) and we know we don't- oh forget it! That's all logical isn't it? But seatbelts aren't? You've got to be sh**ing me....