Firefighters: best place to mount a siren and horn?

I have a dash light, but our Chief encourages us to have lights 360°, for safety purposes.

 

I understand the thinking, but if you drive to another state with red lights mounted on your truck, you are probably going to be considered illegal. Heck, if you leave the red flashing light on the dash you could possibly get a ticket.
On a side note: Some idiots were parading around from out of state supposedly "raising funds for veterans". They had an old caprice painted black and white with red lights looking like a fake cop car following them down the road. Local police stopped them and confiscated the car. Last I saw, it was still at the police impound lot.

 

I appreciate everybody's concern. However, I'm not here to decide whether or not to install my siren, only where to install it.

I am moving the dash lights, siren and and speaker that I had in my Ram into my Tacoma. I am familiar with the laws, and only use these devices when in my fire district, and responding to an emergency. When I am running lights and siren, even the police move to the side of the road to let me pass.

 

Any additional light will be mounted discreetly, likely they will be strobes mounted within the headlight housing. Unless turned on, you would never know they were there. I don't want any lights visible, at all, when not in use. Not on my beautiful new Tacoma!

 

We have a guy in our department who recently came from New Jersey, and they had blue lights there, too.

Here, volunteers use red and white lights, and must use a siren. We must use due regard, and reduce speed for intersections. It does not give us right of way, but the deputies don't take kindly to folks who don't make way for us.

 

I understand this but it doesn't make it OK. A bunch of untrained yokels ripping their personal vehicles through the streets pushing civilians through intersections is idiotic. Especially when it's for a simple ems call. Causing an accident is not worth showing up first to someone's stomach pain.

 

You don't know his area and neither do I, but i imagine it's similar to my area, on the backroads around here you can safely go 20 over, no pushing people through intersections just the occasional car or two of traffic.

 

Oh, I think it's dumb. I was a volunteer, my Dad was a firefighter, and my brother is a chief. I don't even like the stupid blue lights. It took me a while to figure out why all these idiots were racing around in their personal vehicles trying to look like an emergency vehicle. It's an arkansas thing, never seen it anywhere else? I always wonder if they ever show up and no one brings the truck cause they all drive straight to the call in the personal vehicle?

 

I get that but that is exactly my point. Absolutely no reason to go 20 over. It will get you there 5 seconds faster.

Guess what the second highest cause of firefighter deaths is after overexertion (because they are fat and out of shape)?

 

Yes I highly agree

 

I like this. We have a guy in our group and when we travel to off road, he goes 10-15 mph over the limit ALL THE TIME. I gave him a calculator and had him figure how many HOURS he would have to drive to actually gain any significant amount of time or distance over going the speed limit. he didn't get it.

 

Well around here people will do that anyway, having lights while responding to a call makes it a little bit safer (not that's it's super unsafe anyway).

 

I would think the standard license plate add-on would be sufficient here... If this is a rural area where there is no career department then this makes complete sense. However, if you are making way to help out at a career structure fire, then I'd say the lights are a little over-kill. Cheerio.

 

So what do you do if you get there first and there is no truck?

 

I have a whelen siren mounted behind my grill. I haven't really tested it's full potential yet because I haven't hooked a whelen siren controller yet that has an ampiflier.

 

Access the scene and if medical is needed let dispatch know (if AMR is not en route), if needed then direct traffic, there's always shit to be done.

 

Interesting. The guy here comes onto a truck forum and asks a question about mounting something on his Taco and it turns into an EMS forum trying to decide whether he's a whacker or not. I wonder if he asked this on an EMS forum if they would start a "bro, you could have gotten a full size" discussion

 

Definitely not trying to figure out if he is a whacker that is pretty obvious.

 

Only if 3rd gen EMS

 

Not now I agree, but in the beginning there was a lot of concern about where he would mount his lights, how many lights, etc.