greenlights

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wacker lol

The first thing is what and where the hell did the word whackers come from. To me anyone that breaks the rules of the department no matter what they are is a firefighter breaking the rules set in place by the department. If they are driving light a nut and deck out with lights all over their pov then it seems they would be a firefighter breaking the rules of who ever set them in place of what lights to use on a pov. The driving part would seem the be a firefighter breaking the rules of the highway traffic act and should be charged under the act. The rules set in place by the department should be in forced by the department and should be up held by the department. If there is a light law that is in place and states the type of light then why would any firefighter have to many lights on their pov and get away with doing it. Pull the lights from them or just remove them from the department the same way you would if they were breaking the rules in any other way. Training is a must and would be the first thing a firefighter would need before responding with the use of a light. (true emergency) and if the chief is letting them respond to a grass fire with the use of lights and sirens then that should fall back on him/her to enforce the rules and have them set in place. If they have to get a permit to use lights then pull the permit. I stick by the courtesy light as a request of the right of way and not breaking any rules during the response. I have herd how will that make you any quicker. Well if you had ten cars in front of you and they pulled to the right it would make sense that it would be quicker. As we all have been there when there is that one car in front of the line doing below the posted limit and if they move over and you can now do the posted limit it would be quicker. Battalion Chief... I went over all those stats and when they are posted they way it is there it does sound bad. But as I said I broke them down and I mean I went over every Fatality for car crashes from 200 to 2008. It took me a very long time but the real % when responding and only responding is around 3% which is still to high as we all would like to see all % zero. When you use % it always sound different, lets take baseball and they guy only gets 10 at bats for the year and had ten hits for those 10 at bats. I think he would have a batting average of a 100%, sounds good at the end of the season until they look and see he only was up 10 times compared to all the other players that were at bat 100's of times. A person really needs to go over every stat and I mean every one of them which I did and the % as I said is 3% for responding, oh and not all the ones in that 3% used a light on their pov. Anyway it would be nice to see them do a real study and see what works and what doesn't and have the same allowed across the States or Canada as in my case so that people would know as they travel that all are the same and when they see the firefighter displaying a light they would know that he/she are responding to a true emergency. Art

After reading the posts here I just had to open an account and say a few things. Nova Scotia does not allow Green Lights and I know this for a fact as I have been trying to have our highway traffic act changed starting in 2008. Also when someone says that firefighters are dying while responding due to the use of the lights they really should research this before making that statement. I have a letter from NIOSH who investigates deaths in the States that very clearly says that they are not aware of firefighters deaths cause by them using a light or light and siren. Those who disagree with the use of the lights will tell you that 25% of firefighters are caused during responding and returning. So first to be fare lets take out returning as we don't use light when headed back to the dept. lets take out boats, helicopters, water planes, peddle bike etc. So when you finally take the time to go over all the reports and break it down just to POV's as that is what we are all talking about it is at 3%. Now lets take out the ones that don't use a light while responding and I think you can understand how the % has changed. I just find that when people start talking about lights on POV's that they say a lot of things they might have read somewhere be it right or wrong. Do you know that in Quebec they did a pilot project for a year that lasted 13 due to them working so well with NO problems (green courtesy Lights). The next thing you will hear is that I see firefighters flying all over the place all the time, ask them what they did when they seen this happening and most will say nothing. Next ask them if the pov was responding to an emergency or not, answer will mostly be I don't know. Then ask them who was driving the pov at the time the pov was flying down the road. Was it the firefighter or was it their daughter, wife, son, brother etc etc. Now I am not sure but in my sixteen years of responding with fire trucks and driving a school bus I have never miss used or went flying down the road and maybe that is because I was trained like the rest of firefighters not to. If we are trusted to respond with fire trucks, remove people from wrecked vehicles, search buildings for people and if need be give our life to protect others are you really say you don't trust us to us a light to respond to an emergency. My God some people should really take the time to sit back and think of what we do and give up to volunteer and here we receive no money and I mean know money for what we do. Who do most people trust when asked that question, firefighters and it seems the only ones that don't trust us is the people that are ahead of the fire service. Oh an by the way most of them respond in their pov with a red light and siren.... Anyway thanks for the place to rant................lol But as I said please research before you post as there is always be someone that has the right information. Thanks