by Stuart Gray
BELLS AND WHISTLES
LIGHTS AND SIRENS. We use them to alert traffic to our presence. We use them to let you, the pedestrian, know that we are there and to be aware of us. We use them to let worried relatives know that we are on our way and will be with their ill or injured loved one imminently. We don’t use them to annoy you and, contrary to what many believe to be true, we never use them ‘just to get home earlier’.
The blue lights are designed to be seen from a long way off. There are usually more intense strobes at the front of the light bar, so that you can tell in which direction the emergency vehicle is travelling; in other words, is it coming towards you?
On most of our vehicles, there are three main siren tones. These are activated when the ‘999’ button is pressed on the control pad in front of the driver. In my FRU car, that pad is to my right at the level of the windscreen.
The first sound emitted is the ‘wail’ - that’s the long, drawn-out tone. It’s used on long stretches of road, to give forward warning to drivers and pedestrians ahead that we are coming. It will increase in volume as we draw closer, then it will decrease in volume and the pitch will ‘bend’ as we pass by. This is known as the Doppler Effect, and that’s a whole different book.
There is a little ‘stalk’ with a button at the end, near the steering wheel, and this is used to change from one type of siren to the next. When it is pressed, the second sound is emitted and this is known as the ‘yelp’, which sounds like a whooping noise. This sound is more effective when approaching traffic at a junction, or in built up areas once the wail has pre-warned everyone that we are coming. It’s more of an ‘OK, we’re here now’ sort of sound. It has a faster cycle time so tends to make heads turn - especially heads that paid no attention to the first sound, or driving heads attached to mobile phones.
Finally, the ‘ray gun’ sound. It’s not actually called that but I don’t know for sure what its real name is so that’s what I call it. (Some vehicles don’t have this sound and instead have a ‘hi-lo’ option, which is similar to the old-fashioned ‘nee-naw’ sound but kind of sexed-up.) The ray gun sound is a harsh, rapid-cycling tone that really wakes people up. It’s effective at close range when the other two sirens have failed to have an effect. It is also a transitional tone for letting traffic know that we are still on the move. The ‘hi-lo’ is used in much the same way but can be sounded over a long distance with much the same effect as the wail.
There is a fourth sound - the horn, which sounds like a tug boat is coming in to harbour. It’s an American feature, I believe, and most of our newer ambulances, including the cars, have them fitted. At the push of a button, my Vauxhall Zafira can sound like an articulated lorry. Basically, it says, ‘Get out of my way ‘cos you’re on my front bumper now.’
On older ambulances, the switch for changing from one siren to the other is on the floor, near the foot brake. The driver simply moves his foot onto it, clicks down and the sound will change. It also operates as the ‘on-off’ switch for sirens, which allowed for some hilarious pranks among ambulance staff when we all drove them. You could go into someone’s parked vehicle, switch on the siren (it won’t sound if the engine’s off) and then run away and hide until your friend returned, ready to drive off. As soon as he or she started the engine, the siren would blare, usually in an area where the sound would be greatly amplified. The look on the driver’s face was priceless and if you were good at keeping a straight face, and maybe adding a dash of concern, she or he would never know who was responsible. At any rate, they could never prove it.
Some people ignore all of our bells and whistles; it’s as though it puts their backs up. But the use of light and noise isn’t so much a ‘move, or else’ as a ‘please let me pass’, and it could mean we meet our target response time, or that we save someone’s life. That ‘someone’ might just be your mum, or your husband, or your son or daughter. Any delay caused by obstructive traffic or stupid people will inevitably have an effect on our targets, or the patient’s life, or both. How would you feel if you had to wait an extra minute or two with your dying loved one just because some driver didn’t want to move over?
There is still an element of courtesy about moving aside for an emergency vehicle, but it is now against the law to obstruct them (or us as individuals) from performing our duties. The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006, which came into force on February 20, 2006, makes it a specific offence to obstruct or hinder emergency workers (including ambulance personnel) who are responding to emergency calls. Currently, the maximum penalty is a fine of £5,000.
Obstructing the free movement of an ambulance in such a way as to cause a delay would be an offence under this new law, but there is confusion among drivers about what they can and cannot do when an emergency vehicle is approaching, so here are some tips to help:
*As soon as you see us and it is safe to do so, indicate and pull over to the left. We will generally drive on the outside of traffic so will want to pass you on the right. If you pull to the right, we will have no choice but to cut in to the left and this may cause an accident.
* If we approach up the middle of a lane, pull over to the left if you are driving in the left lane or the right if you are driving in the right lane. We are ‘splitting you up’ to make a path through the congestion.
* Do NOT stop dead in front of us. Your flashing hazard lights won’t prevent an accident. You must try to avoid using your brakes unnecessarily when you see us coming. Oh, and stay off your phones while driving. I’ve had a number of near-misses when drivers didn’t or couldn’t hear my siren as I approached and then decided to pull a stunt when they suddenly saw me there. While I’m on this subject, how can you afford to be driving that three-litre monster anyway when it’s clear you can’t afford a hands-free kit?
A prime example of obstruction occurred when I was on an emergency call and attempted to wind my way around the busy London traffic. There were roadworks at the junction of two busy roads and this was causing a long, slow-moving queue of traffic. I had made it as far as a T-junction but was blocked in by a stretch limousine that was straddling the middle of the road, attempting to turn right. Unfortunately, he was himself being blocked by the traffic, which had stopped on the main road running across the junction. I was effectively trapped where I stopped. My lights were on but I switched off my siren; there was little point in keeping it blaring when I was stationary.
The traffic started to move on the main road and the stretch limo tried to clear my path by moving forward and into the flow. This would have solved the problem immediately, and I would have gone on my merry way, arriving only a minute or so late with some luck. However, a coach driver - who had seen and heard me earlier - decided he wasn’t going to let the limo driver through and moved forward into the space created by the flow. He effectively blocked the space that the limo driver could have used to free me up. It was the most selfish piece of driving I have seen in a long while.
So now I was blocked again with no hope of getting forward, because the coach was too long to clear the space immediately. The driver just sat in his seat, ignoring me, so I got out of my car and spoke to him through his window.
‘You’re deliberately obstructing me,’ I said. ‘Did you not know you can be fined for doing that now?’
I didn’t impress him at all and he just ignored me. I looked around, hoping to see a policeman. As I looked back, the coach driver pointed an accusatory finger at the limo driver and shrugged. Disgusting.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Funnily enough, and just to confuse matters, drivers can be prosecuted for not obstructing us, too. This story appeared in the Bury Times:
A motorist was fined for driving through a red light in Bury after manoeuvring to make space for emergency vehicles.
Steve Whittam was caught on camera driving through a red light at 16mph on Angouleme Way. He made the manoeuvre after pulling to a stop to allow a police van that was using sirens and blue lights to pass him.
He said at a hearing before Bury magistrate on Monday that moving off through the red light after the police van had been the safest thing to do to avoid blocking the path of any further emergency vehicles.
He said: “I was in a dangerous position, stopped across two lanes of very congested traffic. For all I knew there could have been more emergency vehicles on their way. They would not have been able to get through.”
He told magistrates during the trial that he admitted driving through the red light but had pleaded not guilty because he thought that was the only way to get an opportunity to explain the circumstances.
The incident happened at the junction with Knowsley Street at about 10.45am on February 13.
Magistrates said they had sympathy with Whittam but saw no special circumstances to excuse his offence. They fined the financial adviser, who lives in Chester, £120 plus £250 costs and put three penalty points on his driving licence.
Mr Whittam (46) told magistrates: “I think it’s disgraceful. I did what I thought was the safest thing to help the police and other drivers. I could have just paid the fine and forgotten about it but I wanted to come to court to explain the circumstances as a matter of principle.”
Red lights are always a problem. When we drive up behind the car at the front of the queue at traffic lights on red, most drivers will move out of the way. As long as they don’t cross too far into the road, that should be fine. But some people simply refuse to move at all. I imagine they’re worried they’ll be prosecuted for running the light, like Mr Whittam. Surely the fact that they were only doing it for an emergency vehicle should justify the action?
Apparently not. I’m willing to bet that whether or not you earn a ticket for being public-spirited largely depends on the police force and how it views such ‘offences’, but speaking from my own point of view, I really need drivers to move out of the way, even if that means crossing a red light. If they don’t, especially in central London, I could lose two or three minutes of valuable time. Clearly something needs to be done to clear up the law here.
Sirens seem to bug people more and more these days. It’s a legal requirement that we use our lights and sirens in order to forewarn you that we are there, and they are a necessary evil. I don’t understand why, but I increasingly see people plugging their ears as we approach, and even shouting abuse or shaking their fists at us when we pass, as if we will suddenly stop the noise to appease them.
I was on an emergency call in Soho, where admittedly the narrow streets and closed-in buildings can amplify sound, when I was screamed at by a man who was walking along the pavement. I had my window down so could hear him, but I doubt he would have been silenced if I had wound the window back up.
‘Oh, shut up!’ he yelled.
I couldn’t believe he was directing this at me, and I looked across at him to check. Sure enough, there he was, all purple-faced and angry. How dare I use noise to warn people that I’m coming? From now on, I’ll look out for him and ensure that I switch everything off and glide past as I freewheel to my destination.
If he were to drop down in the street with a heart attack any time soon, and found himself hovering between life and death, perhaps he would be a little less keen on the sound of silence.
CREEPY CALLS
CALLS IN THE DEAD of night can sometimes be unnerving when you’re working alone on the FRU. The prospect of going into dark estates and facing threats until back-up arrives is one of the reasons many people in the service prefer not to volunteer for the job. There’s a great deal of comfort to be gained from knowing that your crewmate is watching your back; these days nobody in the emergency services is immune to sudden and unprovoked attack.
A FRU paramedic attended a collapsed woman recently and found himself being held hostage in a bed-sit after her husband closed and locked the door and refused to let him out. That situation was only defused when the medic threatened to call the police. In a separate incident, a female responder was threatened with a knife by a gang of youths who approached her car and demanded she give them her stab vest. She, too, escaped harm, staying in the vehicle and calling the police. The gang ran off.
A call to a block of flats in a dodgy part of London made me pause before going in when the woman who answered the intercom sounded threatening towards me. She refused to buzz the door open at first and simply hung up when I told her I was from the ambulance service; a crew was already inside and Control had reported a ‘disturbance and raised voices’ in the background. I had been asked to be cautious and to report any incident for police backup, and when I eventually got in I found the crew dealing with two noisy drunks and an aggressive female (the one who wouldn’t buzz me in). Nothing too serious, as it turned out; it was difficult to make the decision to go into the premises before I knew what was going on, but sometimes instinct works out well.
Then a call to another block of flats in a large estate where one patient, known to be violent, had already threatened a crew that had been there earlier that day. This time the call was to the flat opposite, but every nerve in my body was screaming with preparedness to get the hell out of there if the nutcase from across the corridor decided to come out and have a go. I had to keep watching out for movement behind me as I headed towards the address after stepping out of the lift. To be honest, I had expected him to be at the doors when they opened - I would’ve had no way of escaping.
A patient who had just been assaulted called the police and ambulance but my crewmate and I were there first, so we went into the address to treat the woman concerned for cuts and bruises. I went out to get the chair for my colleague and heard the front door of the premises slam shut. I turned around to see a man running away from the house and I went back to see what was happening. I got back in to be told that the assailant had been in the house all along. My colleague had been on his own when the guy had appeared from upstairs and decided to leg it. Luckily for him, the man wasn’t brave or stupid enough to do anything worse.
Some callers deliberately make life more than a little uncomfortable for us at times. I went to a block of flats in a run-down estate for an ‘unknown male with chest pain’. The call had come through to us from the police. The details included a statement that the line had ‘gone dead’ and I was sent to investigate. I went up to the relevant floor of the building and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked again and again, each time shouting out that I was with the ambulance service. I was greeted by nothing but silence.
I was beginning to wonder about how real this call was. Hoax calls are common in this part of London and I wouldn’t be the first paramedic to go knocking on the door of an unwitting person’s flat as they tried to sleep after a hard night shift. I’m going to end up getting a black eye for my trouble here, I thought.
I persevered, however, because it also wouldn’t be the first time that someone had dialled 999 and then promptly died in their own front room.
I pushed on the door and it creaked open. This was starting to feel like something out of a ‘B’ movie horror film. I cautiously pushed it some more until I could see inside the flat.
‘Hello? Anyone there?’ I shouted.
Silence. I wasn’t feeling safe with this. The flat was small and dingy, and this was a rough neighbourhood. The fact that this person’s door was unlocked and set for me to come in on my own was giving me the creeps.
I pushed the door wider and saw a large black guy slumped in an armchair in the front room. He looked about 25 years old, so I was even more concerned about this ‘chest pain’ call. I stepped inside, calling all the time to see if he would move, but he didn’t. I looked left and right to check the rooms either side of me (you never know who might be lurking in the shadows) and continued forward until I got to the man in the chair. He was clearly breathing. He looked asleep but his body was slumped in an unnatural way.
I shook him hard a couple of times and he opened his eyes. He stared right at me and looked as surprised as I felt.
‘Did you call an ambulance?’ I asked.
‘No, I called the police,’ he replied, shuffling himself into a more comfortable position.
‘You called and said you had chest pain, right?’
‘Yeah, but only because the police wouldn’t come when I asked them to.’
I wasn’t pleased with him, I can tell you. He had been feigning this. It was all an act. When I finally gleaned what had prompted him to call, he told me his flatmate had robbed him. He had come home to find all he owned gone and had called the police. When they weren’t immediately sympathetic, he had decided to add in the fact that he had chest pains - he must have hung up on them for added effect. The police had contacted us and I was sent to check it out - seems all a bit back to front, doesn’t it?
The guy had stayed absolutely still while I shouted down the hall at him and worried about my own safety. I’d thought I was walking into a murdered man’s flat and that the murderer may well still be there, waiting to knife a cop and getting me instead.
Without wanting to stereotype people, the recent influx of Lithuanians to London has presented us with additional risks. Most of them are hard-working people who cause no bother, but, as with any nationality, some are nasty pieces of work. In my experience, when they drink they can become aggressive. They also tend to be big and unafraid of a punch-up. When they aren’t lolling about in a drunken stupor on a bus, they are giving me reason to worry about my personal safety.
A call to a flat in Clapton for a ‘man who is bleeding’ left me sitting in the ambulance wondering why there was no detail other than that. Why was he bleeding, for example? Where was he bleeding from? How much blood was there?
We entered the housing complex and made our way up a flight of stairs to a badly-maintained and dimly-lit floor containing ten or so flats, the numbering of which was anyone’s guess unless you happened to live there.
