Truck Positioning

Well after seeing this video, it looks like I'll jump back on my truck positioning soapbox.




and here's another showing of some great drivers:





If you have worked any length of time on a fire apparatus you have had a close call or a car do something stupid at the scene of a roadway incident. People these days are distracted by IPODs, IPAD's, Twitter, Text, Word with Friends, and other things all while they are driving. And then insert a fire truck that isn't normally there parked in the lane they are traveling in, and well you know the rest. Therefore we must know that we have to protect ourselves.

As I mentioned in we have to protect ourselves. 45,000lbs in between me and an out of control car is better than nothing that's for sure. Too many of us fail to use our apparatus to protect our members. We were on scene of a an accident at my volunteer department two weeks ago and a dump truck's brakes failed and he came within inches of hitting a car head on at our scene which was well protected and well controlled (or so we thought). What I learned (or remembered) is that we can't control things like mechanical failure or distracted driving, we can only protect ourselves from it. I had positioned the truck so that the scene was protected from traffic, but I couldn't protect everyone from themselves.

I reality that day we should have had a truck hit, if he hadn't turned into oncoming traffic (which I see as the worse of the two options he had) he would have hit our Engine. I post again about this so that people remember that you need eyes in the back of your head on the road. People forget and don't care about us we are holding them up. Protect your firemen, protect your family, protect your department, use apparatus to shield a scene. Keep the second due apparatus on scene a little longer to keep your folks safer.

Thanks for reading, and Stay Safe and Stay trained.