Situational Awareness

[crokett]

I was on my way home from the Dr with my daughter. Sitting at a stoplight.. 3 lanes - 2 go straight, 1 is straight/turn right to interstate on-ramp. I am 4th car waiting to to turn onto the interstate. Two fire trucks come roaring up in our lane. The first car in line pulls forward (not before the firetruck has to stop) and starts to turn onto the interstate, then stops in the travel lane. The rest of us all have to pull onto the shoulder around him to clear the way, but he is still blocking the fire trucks. The driver finally figures this out and pulls onto the shoulder. Then on the interstate, cars are stopping -in the travel lanes- forcing the fire trucks to do some obstacle course driving around them.

I wondered what part of 'pull over' do these drivers not understand?

[atgcpaul]

I wondered what part of 'pull over' do these drivers not understand?

I hate being in these situations especially when you're stopped at a red light.
Do the other people in the cross traffic realize I have to move out into the
intersection to let the fire truck go? If I'm forced to turn onto this ramp and
I don't want to go that way, how do I get back to where I want to go
without backing down this ramp? You have to move far enough ahead and
pull over so the vehicle can also pass all those other cars between you and
the vehicle. Oh yeah, and what direction is that siren really coming from,
and it sounds like in your case, what direction do they want to go? He
probably didn't realize they wanted to go on the interstate, too.

Last week I was driving home on a divided road with 2 lanes in each direction
and a large shoulder. One car up ahead 1/8 mile. Noone behind me. I'm in
the right hand lane going 50 in a 45. Out of nowhere red and blue lights
close in with just barely audible sirens. I didn't think to move into the
shoulder because there was an open lane for him to pass. That didn't stop
the cop --IMO--from making a purposeful attempt to side swipe me at
100mph as he passed.

Sometimes you're just not given enough time to process what's going on.

Until cars are controlled on the road like they were in "Minority Report", I really
wish someone would invent a car radio that 1) automatically silenced when an
emergency vehicle approached 2) would tell you the direction that
it was coming from and 3) instructed you to keep moving until the vehicle had
enough space to pass.

Paul

[toolguy1000]

sad to say but in our country today, it's all about ME!!!!! no awareness at all about anyone or anthing around us makes us desensitized to our surroundings. i'll bet that of the drivers that did pull over, at least one thought it would be a good idea to follow the firetrucks once they went by to make up for the time they lost pulling over!

[LinuxRandal]

One thing I agree with Paul on is sirens. With how soundproof today's cars are, it can be a PITA to know what direction it is coming from (this is WITHOUT a radio playing, I rarely have the radio on when driving). Compared to my first car, you can easily have less then two hundred feet between you and the emergency vehicle when you hear it.

Now that said, I recently asked about itunes, in part do to some of this. There is a show called Canada's Worst Drivers, that I thought my nephew should watch (around 1 year experience). It isn't just the kids that need to learn, but the kids need to learn that they have others around them, that can and do, do stupid things too.

What I have seen lately:
Stopping at GREEN lights
Stopping in the middle of intersections
Turning on red, in plainly marked, no turn on red area's
Driving BACKWARDS, DOWN THE HIGHWAY, IN DENSE FOG (last Friday night)
Driving below the minimum speed limit, in the fast/passing lane

These are just the recent ones, that don't count the obvious Texting/cell phone use, etcetera.

[scmhogg]

Slightly OT. But, I think they should prohibit the use of sirens and cell phone rings in radio commercials.

Steve

[Hoover]

Slightly OT. But, I think they should prohibit the use of sirens and cell phone rings in radio commercials.

Steve

I agree with you on the sirens and phone rings. Poor taste on the advertising genius(?) that came up with that idea.

[Richard in Smithville]

I'm always surprised when I see other cars pull over when an emergency vehicle gets behind them.

Around where I live, we rely on volunteer firefighters. They have a green flashing light in their personal vehicle to let others know when they are on an emergency call. Problem was, they never told anyone else what the light was about.

[cabinetman]

For some people immediate awareness just doesn't happen. They may have been caught off guard, or not having room to navigate off the road, or they may have their radio blaring and just don't hear the sirens.

Those extra loud train-like horn blasts can scare the armhair off some people. Older folks just react more slowly.
.

[scmhogg]

For some people immediate awareness just doesn't happen. They may have been caught off guard, or not having room to navigate off the road, or they may have their radio blaring and just don't hear the sirens.

Those extra loud train-like horn blasts can scare the armhair off some people. Older folks just react more slowly.
.

Many are just in the HUA position.

Steve

[cabinetman]

Many are just in the HUA position.

Steve

Maybe their thumb.
.

[Shep]

I was once in a car with a girl I knew back in high school. We were on a 2 lane "highway" waiting at a light. We were in a left turn only lane with car ahead of us and a meian to our left, and traffic to our right. A fire truck came up behined us, apparantly trying to turn left and laid on the air-horn. My friend Nikki went into panic/shock mode and had a nervous breakdown on the road. Traffic finally moved out of the way, but not before Nikki was basking in a pool of tears and yelling at the fire truck for "yelling" at her.

[billwmeyer]

In defense of the driver, he was probably busy creating a very important text message about tonights plans, while eating a sandwich and reading a magazine, so it was just lower on his priority list.

Bill

[BobSch]

Then there's the driver that pulls right up on the bumper of the car ahead. Even if they see/hear an emergency vehicle they don't have anywhere to go!

I had one of those bozos pull up behind me, leaving his rear end on a set of RR tracks. I'll bet he needed clean shorts when the lights started flashing.

[crokett]

I try to make allowances for some things. However, in this case, the driver blocking the ramp had several options. First was to pull straight across the ramp onto the shoulder. Second was simply to keep going down the ramp and get in the interstate. Third was pull onto the ramp shoulder. Any/all of these would have cleared the way for the cars and the emergency vehicle behind him. Instead he did the absolute worst thing he could do. My radio was on and yet I managed to see and hear the fire truck.

There is absolutely no excuse for stopping in the travel lane on the interstate. None. It wasn't just one car, it was several. When you see an emergency vehicle, it is simple, pull off onto the shoulder.

[leehljp]

. . . A fire truck came up behined us, apparantly trying to turn left and laid on the air-horn. My friend Nikki went into panic/shock mode and had a nervous breakdown on the road. Traffic finally moved out of the way, but not before Nikki was basking in a pool of tears and yelling at the fire truck for "yelling" at her.

This is what I see as much as anything else. Panic grips people who are unprepared. The problem is multi-faceted. Panic, logic, reasoning skills/ability, listening, wrong guessing based on inaccurate info - which direction coming from or going, overall awareness, etc.

People who expect "order" in their life and categorize everything, list everything, place everything in order and in its place - generally need to "think through" disorder before reacting. Instant emergencies such as mentioned cause panic. I can predict for some people what they will do in emergencies. (These people often make good back seat drivers but terrible emergency drivers!) Besides the reference some might see as inferred, I do make this as a more generic statement to certain personality types and some societies more than others.

With a more and more crowded world and rote memory learning, deductive reasoning skill demise affects awareness because "awareness" for survival is not needed. We are protected by Police, by fire detectors, in many situations, such as warning labels, to flashing lights, to beeps, to . It is fast becoming a world that personal awareness is eliminated for emergencies is all but eliminated. Even warnings against bad parts of town. This is not a rant but a fact about people's protection that comes as society evolves. People in industrialized nations and educated societies world wide (with a very few exceptions) have lost their reasoning skills that deal with instant emergencies, and consequently "immediate or situational awareness".