Code 3 driving, which is best described as responding in an emergency vehicle with warning lights and a siren, is a funny thing. When you first join a fire department and get to drive, it is second only to fighting fire on the "coolometer." At some point in your career, you become aware of your impending mortality and you start to slow down. The problem in the fire service is bad things are happening within that zone that's somewhere between "It's cool to go fast" and "Let's slow down and just get there, son!" That bad thing is a hurtling 40,000-pound death bomb with a loose nut behind the wheel—at best, it doesn't make it to the incident; at worst, it also kills folks including the driver, other firefighters, and others in the process. We spend an inordinate amount of time working out ways to fight fire safely because we get killed doing it dumb, yet we seem to ignore something equally dangerous that is hurting our firefighters, citizens, and taxpayers—irresponsible emergency vehicle operations (photo 1).
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