New sirens, lights could help drivers

In regard to Tuesday’s article, “Medics struggle with traffic,” yes, I’ve seen this happen and I myself will usually wait until the last moment to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle.

But I think this problem has become somewhat like the old car alarm going off a dozen times a day. When was the last time you heard a car’s alarm and thought someone was actually trying to steal it? Yes, I know, they’re emergency vehicles and if their lights and sirens are going, there’s an emergency. But it has become so commonplace with more traffic accidents, population growth, terror alerts, etc., that people kind of tune out the lights and sirens. And all the gizmos and gadgets available to the modern-day driver don’t help matters either.

I think the makers of these emergency vehicles could learn something from their European counterparts, whose emergency vehicles are equipped with sirens scientifically proven more likely to be heard by the human ear than the typical siren of American emergency vehicles.

Maybe vehicle manufacturers could put some kind of alarm or light in cars that would come on when a emergency vehicle is in the general area. Kind of like the flashing lights posted around fire stations that go off when firefighters are leaving the station to respond to an emergency.

But I guess in the end, we as drivers just need to pay more attention to what we’re doing behind the wheel. .

Everett