Should Emergency Vehicles Be Speed Limitted/Governed?

Forget your department SOP's, etc- should all emergency vehicles be speed limitted or governed?

Why or why not?

Should that speed limit be different for different types of vehicles? (ie: as they get heavier and bigger, should the limit be lower?)

Consider that by speed limiting or governing them, regardless of how some members liek to drive and risk theirs, yours and the public's life, the governor will lessen the chance. (It won't eliminate it- ever!)

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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on January 25, 2009 at 8:17pm

How many people are familiar with the Hierarchy of Control?

Allow me to introduce you to your new bext friend when undertaking any sort of risk assessments.

When we have identified a hazard and assessed the risk, we then to put in place a suitable controlmeasure.

When deciding on a control measure, step through the hierarchy and put in place "real" and "effective" control measures.

Elimination- Can we eleiminate the cause of the hazard? (Remove all emergency vehciles from the road)

Substitution- Can we substitute the way we get to a scene? (Give every department helicopters instead)

Engineering- Can engineer out the hazard/risk? (Fit every vehicle with speed limitters)

Administration- Can we use administration to control the hazard? (Training, SOP's, permits, etc)

PPE- Can we wear PPE to protect us from the hazard?

Here in Oz, it is clearly legislated that we must Eliminate or reduce the hazard so far as is practicable.

Throughout industry when dealing with OHS/HSE issues, many organizations go straight to Administration and PPE controls. By doing so, they're breaching OHS Acts and Regulations and leaving themselves wide open to a big can of whup ass from the authorities.

We are far better and safer to use mutliple controls. For example, fit speed limitters as well as introduce more stringent training requirements along with stricter licensing requirements.

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Permalink Reply by Todd on January 25, 2009 at 8:35pm

Best post on the thread!

My thoughts on the subject:

Adopt a policy and ENFORCE IT!!!!!!!!!!! That's what is going to make the most change.

Until we as a group get serious and clean up our own ranks things aren't going to change.

Look over your policy on apparatus driver/operators. Is it enough? Do you need to make changes. Do it.

Extensive training for anybody operating any emergency vehicle, including yearly ongoing training. Just because Cletus took a driver training course back in '88 doesn't mean he gets a free pass. He needs annual driver training just like everybody else.

Strict enforcement of any violations of policy and/or laws. Get with local law enforcement and have them ticket anybody they see operating emergency vehicles in a reckless manner. If you have a driver who's constantly operating in an unsafe manner take away their driver privileges.

If you are slack on drivers don't give in to the temptation to look the other way and allow substandard drivers. Put your pride aside and do whatever it takes to keep substandard drivers out from behind the wheel. Do more training. Sign mutual aid contracts for those times when you don't have drivers. Whatever it takes.

We've got to get serious about this issue or somebody is going to get serious about it for us. We already know that if the NFPA gets serious about it we are going to have yet another technological doo-dad to deal with. Just something else to drive the cost of apparatus higher and to break when you need the truck the most. If the Feds/States get serious about it it'll be a bureaucratic nightmare. Wouldn't it be simple if we as a group handled it ourselves?

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 25, 2009 at 9:24pm

Correct - There's one 'older more experienced' driver that we have (hell, he's almost as old as me!) that I've told to 'slow down' when out on the road. And no, I'm not an officer, just someone who likes his skin in one piece thank you. Older and more experienced doesn't always mean better and safer. Not everyone even tries to control the adrenalin rush.

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 25, 2009 at 9:27pm

And the majority of our appliances require a Medium Rigid licence here in the CFA. (I have HC)

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 25, 2009 at 9:31pm

Not everywhere Tom! Emergency vehicles governed? Our new fire trucks are, I don't knowabout the ambulances and I doubt that our police cars are. NFPA isn't relevant here. Private vehicles governed? Not here they're not.

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 25, 2009 at 9:47pm

The question. "should all emergency vehicles be speed limitted or governed"

The answer. Yes.

Why? Vehicles like ours have no reason to be travelling fast, they are simply not safe at high speed. Inertia. Weight imbalance. Over weight. All good reasons to limit speed for any large vehicles, let alone those with flashing lights and sirens.

I said earlier that our newer vehicles are speed governed. And that includes trucks that were built in the 1980's. So we can't go all that fast anyway. But guess what? Not many of our vehicles ever travel on roads where they could even attain that governed speed! We mostly drive in suburban areas, we mostly drive on minor roads (how many freeway drives do most of us do on the way to an incident?)

Even thought Lutan1 said to ignore our SOP's, that's where the controls come in. After the vehicle was built with a governor, after the driver was trained. SOP's that tell you what you can and can't do. Our SOP's limit us to no more than 20 km/h over the limit (OK, about 12.5 mph for those who insist on using the old measurement). The roads I drive on I limit myself to no more than 10 km/h over the posted limit. The road & vehicle combination isn't safe enough for higher speeds. Then we have a blanket maximum of 120 km/h over all - and that includes the smaller vehicles like cars as well. With the newer trucks governed to 100 km/h we turn the sirens off on freeways and watch everyone passing us.

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Permalink Reply by Teddy on January 25, 2009 at 9:55pm

I'm not an advocate of unsafe driving by any means. I'm all for safety and abide by our bylaws of not going over 10mph over the posted limit while responding, but I have been in situations where you need that extra amount of speed and if there was a governor, I'd be worried about not being able to achive that speed. I think there needs to be more education, and stricter penalties to those who dont follow the rules, but i dont think a mechanical device needs to be installed to limit the speed.

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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on January 25, 2009 at 11:27pm

I should clarify my comment about igonoring the SOP- I meant fro mthe perspective that it's an Admin control and many don't follow them.

Good points though Tony. There's not many who maintain a set limit on their vehicles. I have a good frined (best man at my wedding) who's a MICA paramedic and no one ever (and I mean ever!) exceeds the set limit by more than 30 km/h. If you do, then watch out! He makes no exception, regardless of what type of call they're going to....

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Permalink Reply by 144Truck on January 26, 2009 at 7:17am

We have "Voluntarily" limited speed on our line apparatus since 1989... All of our front line pieces are geared for 58 to 60 Mph. Since we have no limited access highway in our first-due, it made more sense to use the power to climb hills than to "Go Racing". The Truck, a 1978 Mack CF/Baker, is geared for 55.

Besides.... if we geared them to make 70, somebody would try to drive them at 70.

Unfortunately, "Nanny NFPA" is forcing the issue and adding thousands of dollars to the price tag because the fire service is unable to police its' own.

144Truck