The importance of wearing your seatbelt in a firetruck at all times not just during emergency runs - Essay Example

uch as the propensity of high profile vehicles to roll over, extended breaking distances and fatigue due to work schedules unique to the firefighters. The ejection of occupants as a result of rollover (the overturning of the vehicle) is the most common cause of non-fire related death and serious injury to firefighters. Accidental vehicle rollover itself is not responsible for most fatalities, however. Instead, they are typically the result of the occupants not wearing seatbelts when the vehicle rolls over.

Errors in driver perception due to factors such as fatigue, inattention and inexperience are the primary causes for their failure to comprehend the proper rate of speed for turns and curves on a particular street. A driver of any vehicle is required to consider a great deal of information while managing the mechanical operation. The operator of a fire-truck, however, must process additional, more complex information than does the average driver in addition to managing a larger vehicle and with a justified sense of urgency when responding to a call.

Fire-trucks are much heavier, have a higher profile frame which raises its center of gravity and a different braking system than a family car. In addition, the fire-truck driver must be aware of and compensate for varying levels of water that shifts constantly in the tank, sometimes with and others times opposed to the current momentum of the truck. Depending on many conditions, the appropriate speed for a fire-truck could be lower than the normally recommend speed on a curve. If the driver, by force of habit, takes a turn at the same speed as they would in a passenger car, they greatly increase their chance for rollover.

It is an inherent feature of all persons to routinely perform familiar tasks such as (and maybe especially as) driving at least somewhat on the sub-conscious level. Anyone who has been behind another car at a stop-sign and forgot, maybe just for a moment, that they were not at a stop-light