The Glade 4.0

Rafael/kulidwen/TMNT: Are you purposefully being vague or are you fishing for a specific response?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I think the ambulance, cop car, whatever should be allowed to exceed the speed limit in order to save a life, yes. You can't measure that sort of thing by percentage. It has to be a reasonable use of discretion on the part of the drivers. That's why they have sirens, that's why they have right of way, etc. The life of the individual in the emergency vehicle is in a precarious spot.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Baby carriage?

I'd be curious in that answer as well Leshani. In traffic, a bicycle has right of way, assuming they are following the laws (required to use the same laws of the road as other vehicles).

That said, I completely disagree with any priority given to funeral processions.

I'm not really sure where this topic is going, either. It seems rather odd to me, frankly, but whatever.


Inherent in this statement is the idea that there is such a thing as unreasonable use of an emergency vehicle. So I think the the question ultimately being asked is: What constitutes "reasonable use"? When does an emergency vehicle's behavior cross over into unreasonable territory?


In many cases this is true -- at least for ambulances. In the absence of specific information it seems reasonable (as a driver) to assume this is the case in all such situations because of the logistics involved. But ... can an emergency vehicle go as far as to risk the lives of other members of the "civilian" population in the name of trying to save another? Setting aside any emotional attachments to the question -- would this make sense with respect to general public welfare?

That is, suppose that an ambulance responding to a heart-attack call crests a hill at high speed, striking and killing a child who was playing in the street. Due to the terrain and their speed, they simply couldn't stop fast enough. Would you say that this improved or impaired public safety?

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And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Mail truck - its federal.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

This question has a large degree of false precision. How does the ambulance crew know that a given speed will increase the chance of survival by a given amount? What if it's not survival, but rather limb or eyesight? How fast is the speed limit in the first place? What are the road conditions?

Obviously the ambulance crew/fire truck/police car wants to get to the hospital/accident/fire/crime scene as fas as possible, but they want to get there. You do no one any good by not making it, but by the same token, emergency driving is best left the the person in the seat doing it. Trying to put artificial limitations on it by making up vague examples like this one isn't useful.

Obviously, this does not give license to do anything one damn well pleases in an emergency vehicle, but the question of what should the EV be allowed to do does not change the fact that everyone else should get out of the way. As for some system where all traffic freezes across the entire route, the route could be many many miles in some places. Installing a system to tell everyone to freeze would be expensive and disruptive. IT's much easier and cheaper to use the current method.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Rather, DE, I think that is my point. It's largely judgement vs. the ability to formulate an exact answer. The discussion of gross misconduct or abuse of EV's is a bit more trivial, as these instances are probably extremely rare.

However, one of my points of creating this thread was satisfied by two posters already. That is not a matter of public interest for the boards, just my own curiosity.

The other is the matter that you said a system to freeze the transit path the EV must traverse is not worth the cost (in terms of time and disruption) for what is gained (a marginal increase in safety for both the emergecy vehicle, and those it must navigate around). Thus, such a scenario establishes that there is a threshold where emergency vehicles do not have absolute priority.

I think this is something rather obvious, but several posters have made absolute declarations oversimplying this subtle detail. Implicit (but only to them) are their own definitions of "reasonable" in such situations, to establish what is a reasonable exception to such a rule.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I understand where Kulidwen is going with this. Yes, we all know emergency vehicles have the right of way. Yes, we all know emergency vehicles take priority. Yes, we all know you should get out of the way and let emergency vehicles through. You can all stop trying to impress everyone with how good, noble, and charitable you are now.

They can exceed the speed limit if need be for emergency purposes. By how much? There is a maximum speed that a road can be safely traveled, regardless of other traffic, lest you find your vehicle upside-down in someone's living room. Flying 100mph down the highway is one thing, 100mph in a residential district is entirely different. I would suspect this particular tidbit is something covered in training for emergency vehicle drivers. As Diamondeye has pointed out, there are cases in which it would not be safe to move to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle (he specifically cites stopping on railroad tracks). Again, I would venture to guess this is something that comes up in training. An emergency driver needs to be able to arrive at his destination without creating yet another emergency.
United States Postal Service

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^ I win!!!

Corolinth is pretty much right. However, this discussion was just a vehicle (pardon the pun) for the idea of discretion and judgement vs. procedure and protocol in general. The specific discussion arose from some NRC rules regarding Reactor Operations and maintaining the Liscenced Design Basis for domestic commercial
nuclear power plants.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yes, it is judgement.



No it doesn't. Those two things having nothing to do with each other. The fact that emergency vehicles have absolute priority does not in any way mean that we ignore cost-effectiveness in deciding how to grant it.



There is no exception to such a rule. You're confusing the absolute priority of the emergency vehicle with the responsibility of the vehicle driver to operate safely and thereby fulfill his purpose in driving it.

For example, emergency vehicles generally slow down before entering intersections while using lights and sirens. This is not a requirement, nor an indication that their priority is less than absolute. It's simply a recognition that not everyone pays attention or obeys the law all the time, and that if they get in an accident, regardless of where fault may eventually lie, that does neither them or their passanger/crime victim/fire victim any good.

The fact that they must still operate in a safe manner is a limitation on what the driver may do, but it has nothing to do with priority. As in the above example, the fact that the ambulance slows down in no way relieves one iota of duty from anyone else to stop.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Which is why sitting around trying to figure out some "threshold" is pointless. It depends on the exact situation.



This is true.



This is the key point right here. Absolute priority does not mean that traffic must yield immediately regardless of the consequences. It means that it must do so as soon as it is safe to do so.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think there might have been better examples to use to explore this topic.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Reconcile this statement with itself. Or rather, do you intend to say "absolute priority" in a relative sense?



But does it imply a duty for them not not even be there in the first place?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Lex won this one, mail carriers technically have the right of way over all other traffic on the road way.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

I don't need to. Having absolute priority over other vehicles is exactly that - absolute priority. How we go about implementing that is another matter.



Of course not. That's silly. The roads are not there exclusively for emergency use; most of the time there is no emergency in any given place. Moreover, people cannot see into the future in order to not be there, and any system that gave them that ability would not be worht it in view of the fact that simply mandating they move out of the way is far cheaper and works fine.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I believe what Rafakuli was saying is that emergency services vehicles do not have absolute priority at all times. A fire truck en route to the motor pool for a lube and tune has no special precedence over other traffic, nor does a police cruiser when merely making rounds.

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Well, true, but even under situations of duress. Simply put, they don't have "absolute" priority, as evidenced by the fact that there is no absolute acommodations in terms of traffic and other obstacles that provide marginal albeit finite challenges to the safety of the vehicles passage.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

They still have absolute priority. The fact that we don't go to extreme and costly lengths in no way disproves this. Simply put, they DO have absolute priority regardless of the level of expense and effort we go to in order to actually enforce it. The fact that we don't go to illogical lengths to enforce it is not an argument that the priority is anything less than absolute.

As for the accomadations the emergency vehicles must make to safety, that's because any accident they have prevents them from accomplishing the task that is the reason for their priority. Priority is not the end.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's not what I mean by "absolute". The priority given to emergency vehicles encompasses more than just one aspect. Take, for example, that the vehicles were retrofitted/outfitted with special warning devices to make alert traffic. Priority is expressed more than in terms of the traffic laws, but that is just one element, and even in that it's not "absolute" by any means, only a very narrow spectrum.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Ok, first of all, I was the one who used the word "absolute"

What I meant by that was "top priority in all emergency (nonemergency situations were obviously not in question) situations without exception." Top priority means first in line for use of the road in relation to other vehicles. All other vehicles must stop and yield right-of-way.

"Top" however, does not mean there are not other priorities below that. Outweighed =/= weighing nothing. When the emergency vehicle is not within close proximity, there is no good reason to stop traffic in areas it will eventually enter. That does not mean that the priority it has when it gets there is any less than absolute; it just means that we are discussing absolute priority over the road in direct proximity to its location in terms of what the vehicle needs to accomplish its mission. Claiming that the priority is less because it is not given a massive priority of resources in order to make sure people obey the priority is simply extending it from priority in use of the roads to priority over resources of society in general, which would be a strawman since that is clearly a much weaker position.

To put it another way, your previous post was incorrect. They do get absolute accomadation: All other vehicles must yield to them as quickly as possible, under penalty of law. Priority would be measured in relation to use of the roads by other vehicles, not in relation to the expendiatures society makes to enforce that priority.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except apparently to mail trucks, which is highly amusing.

speaking of relenquishing the right of way to official vehicles... anyone else wish they could throw a spike strip in front of some douche of a cop who decides he does not want to wait at the light so he throws his lights on and then turns them off after he crosses the intersection.. and pulls into a 7-11?

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