American vs. European Sirens

For those of you not in the know, I spent most weekend-nights in the last year sleeping in a hospital, occasionally going on ambulance runs. As someone who has spent large amounts of time listening to the American style siren, I feel as though I can accurately explain why they are both so damn annoying and why I feel moderately relieved by the European ones. Also, since I live in a city now, I am forced to constantly hear the sirens, so it is usually on my mind.

First, the purpose of an emergency vehicle siren might need explaining. It probably doesn't, but I am going to do it anyway. The purpose is to make Joe Schmo get the heck out of the way as quickly as possible. It is for this reason that sirens need to be loud. Anything fairly repetitive will do the trick, it just needs to loud and drastically different some anything else that might be distracting the driver. I cannot speak to the efficacy of the European style siren, but the American siren fails to get everyone off of the road. I assume this is because drivers (and I am guilty of this myself) listen to music way too loud and never bother to check their mirrors. I assume that drivers in every country have this problem. Since the siren will never fail to catch everyone's attention, it seems useless to try to design sirens that become increasingly more annoying and mind jarring.

Since they can only do so much for the safety of the people outside of the vehicle, sirens should be designed to fulfill both the "make Joe Schmo get the heck off the road" part and also the "make the driver not go insane" part. My EMT textbook had some sort of name for this. It may have been "siren stress syndrome" or something similar. I don't think it was just "siren syndrome" and I am pretty sure it was alliterative, I just can't remember exactly what it was. Regardless, the point that the book was trying to make was this: you should not allow the fast pace of the siren make you drive faster than you should. One needs to always remain in control. This is impossibly difficult. When there is a serious emergency that your mind is preoccupied with, the rhythm of the siren gets to you and makes you drive much faster than you should. The difference between 75mph and 90mph is only a moment or two of distraction. Unfortunately, the damage that the tank of an ambulance could do at those two speeds is monumental. You own a calculator, figure it out for yourself.

This is why I like the European style so much better. Rather than a barrage of eighth notes at 200bpm, you get quarter notes at a speed less than 100bpm. Both sirens annoy the heck out of anyone on the street, so they both fulfill prerequisite one. The European one just adds a level of safety that ours lacks. I suspect that the reason behind our siren might involve Detroit, muscle cars, and engineers who have seen Bullitt way too many times. Or maybe it just involves emergency workers who want too badly to be Steve McQueen. I am guilty of both of those things. I could care less for Detroit's muscle cars (I drive a small Korean one) but I have seen Bullitt at least 5 or 6 times and I would love very much to be Steve McQueen. The only problem behind my Steve McQueen fantasy is that my muscle car or motorcycle is an anbulance that weighs so much that it still has no pickup, despite its gigantic engine. Seriously, it barely accelerates at all from a standstill, no matter how hard you push the pedal into the floor. Also, driving an ambulance in San Francisco must be impossible. They bounce around and are devils to control on flat, smooth pavement. I can't imagine what they are like when they have to deal with lots of hills and bottoming out.

I think I got the urge to write a paper out of my system and could probably benefit form walking around. I hope it was, at the very least, interesting for you.