The siren song of the ambulance

Driving with the lights and siren is some of the most exhilarating and some of the most stressful driving I do. On the one hand, I get to drive fast; proceed through a red light; drive around slow, stopped traffic by crossing over the double-yellow, and of course there's all of the excitement of the call. On the other hand, I need to maneuver around drivers who drive erratically on my approach, who fail to yield because they don't hear me or simply don't care, and I'm worried about arriving too late. Oh, and the ambulance handles like a pig. A top-heavy pig.

All of this makes the driving more complex, and more demanding, but there's also the two-way radios (we've got four in each ambulance, each with several channels to chose from) the Nextel, the airhorn, and the siren. I can switch the siren over to hands-free, but then I lose my electronic airhorn (although really, it's the real airhorn that clears traffic - that thing sounds like a freight train). There's also the PA. Thank God the ambulance has an automatic transmission.

So, why do I do it? Well, there are a few reasons:
* I get to drive fast, proceed through red lights, etc
* I get to turn on the flashing lights and the siren
* I occasionally get to use the God microphone PA: "Please move to the right" (the PA is an often overlooked asset that few drivers use, and even fewer use well, but more on that in another post)
* I get to save lives, treat the injured, etc, but...
* ... if the patient throws up, he doesn't do so on me