Highway Parking

Imagine you are dispatched to a possible unconscious party in a running vehicle on the left side of a busy roadway. (As a reminder, I hate slumpers in a car. They are terrible, terrible calls and they rarely generate a medical patient. See this link for my rant about stumpers after you read this post. Man, do I hate those calls.)

Anyway, as you approach the scene, you do indeed see a sedan parked at the left side of the road, against the median.  How do you park the ambulance when your call is on a roadway?

Ambulance parking is what I want to write about today. I see a bunch of variations on parking an ambulance on a highway or a major road.* A related point is how people enjoy getting where they are going when they are driving. The same holds true for me, when I am not at work. Off duty, I am the guy likely to be loudly ranting about how somebody messed up rush hour for no good reason. (“Jurisdiction X always screws up traffic! I’d have already cleared this scene! How long does it take to run a five-car crash on a highway?!? Don’t they know what they’re doing to traffic?!?”)

On duty, though, I park the ambulance diagonally and spread out. Yes, I ambulanspread. There are three main reasons. It gives me more room to work behind the “shield” provided by the parked ambulance, it helps other drivers to recognize the ambulance is stopped, and it will tend to push the ambulance away from my scene if it is hit hard from behind.

First, an emergency vehicle should be at the back of the scene. Whether it is a fire truck, police car, or ambulance depends on who gets there first. Whatever vehicle is parked at the back of the scene is acting like a line of cones, making traffic merge away from the scene. 

Second, other drivers need to realize the emergency vehicle is stopped. To help illustrate this, look at this picture:

The ambulance here is parallel to the flow of traffic. How fast is it going? This is the same view that other drivers have of an ambulance when it is driving along at 80mph the speed limit. There is one side of the ambulance visible to drivers approaching from behind. An oncoming driver has to see and understand the ambulance is getting closer and closer… oh, the ambulance is stopped. At night, at highway speeds, when intoxicated, when distracted, when blinded by flashing lights, sometimes recognizing that an ambulance is stopped occurs after driving into the back of said ambulance.

Look at the alternative:

Parking diagonally to the flow of traffic presents two sides of the ambulance. It is a view that hardly ever occurs when the vehicle in question is driving. It is more intuitively obvious the ambulance is stopped. 

Finally, consider the two pictures again. If a heavyweight vehicle traveling at highway speed hits the ambulance in the top photo, where is it going? Right, directly ahead into the scene where we are working. If the ambulance in the second photo is hit, where is it more likely to go? The wheels will pull it at least partially to the right, in the direction it is pointing and away from your workspace. 

There you have three reasons explaining why it is important to park diagonally at calls on highways or major roads. What do you think? How do you park your vehicle when you are working on a highway?

*Parking an ambulance on a neighborhood street in front of a response address is completely different, as well as much simpler. In short, park on the wrong side of the fire apparatus. As a matter of fact, you don't even need to try. Life and karma will do it for you. Whether you park behind the fire engine or in front of it, you will be on the far side from the scene.