Friday, October 20, 2006

Bite Nails and say, "Driver Training!"

New found duties as Crew Chief: (1) Driver Training (2) Crew Chief Training (3) Probie Training... I'm sensing a theme here. Regardless, it is issue #1 that scares the bejeezes out of me. Now, to refresh your memory, recall that Our Fair Lady is a COLLEGE ambulance service in MANHATTAN! Driver Training just isn't so easy.

Our squad is jointly run by the college Health Service and the Department of Public Safety. The Health Service's job is to give us as little money as possible and reduce that amount every time we screw up. Public Safety's job is to let us do whatever we want and not ask questions.... until recently. Apparently their vehicle insurance rates are increasing, which means questions are coming down from the TOP. Specifically, questions phrased as commandments: i.e., STOP GETTING IN ACCIDENTS! Not an unreasonable request.

In Manhattan you're bound to get in minor fender benders here and there. But some drivers new to the art of Emergency Vehicle Operations don't seem to realize that one needs to be a more conservative driver when going blinkies and woowoos (sorry DTs -- such a great phrase), rather than blowing through every intersection without looking and twice on Sundays.

Don't get us wrong, we train our new vehicle operators. First we give them CEVO (the cheaper, textbook only version of EVOC), then they hook up with the wayyyyy overprotective CCs (of which, may I add, I have recently joined the club) and start driving.... slowly.... around the streets of Manhattan. Going Cold, aka, no blinkies. No woowoos. This phase (DiT 1 -- Driver in Training 1) lasts until the trainee gets used to driving an ambulance, that is, a vehicle with a big ole butt (We have Type IIIs) and no rear-view mirrors. This phase sometimes lasts months. However, when a DiT 1 has proved himself, they get promoted to DiT 2. Eligibility to drive HOT! (Fun Fun). Believe you me, if a DiT 1 EVER got in an accident while driving, they would NEVER make it to DiT 2. Oddly enought, not many DiT 1s get into accidents.

Now another note: We have a relatively small campus. It's only 3 blocks wide and 10 blocks long. Response times are not very long at all. So why is it, that after that certain moment when the Captain grants a certain person the privledge to drive HOT and forever after, that the drivers just can't stop banging into EVERYTHING!?!?!

While I was still a Driver, the rank directly below Crew Chief, responding to a call, my crew chief was driving. We were HOT -- full blinkies, full woowoos. We enter an intersection. We need to make a left hand turn. We stop behind a car waiting to make the same turn. The (I assume) nervous driver in front of us panics a bit. He pulls his car forward a few feet. My crew chief sees him starting to move and starts to move as well. Two seconds later: BAM! We've rear-ended the car in front of us.

Now both vehicles could not have been traveling faster than 0.5 mph. Yet somehow, we've just got in an accident. Luckily it was late at night, and there was no other traffic. We sustained a dented quarterpanel, the other driver was unscathed. No one was hurt.

These incidents happen all the time. The most common one is that a driver will, while reversing, back the ambulance directly up into one of the giant yellow concrete posts that sits on either side of the bays at the hospital. (Almost as bad as reversing directly into the side of the fire house -- but a story for another day.) How can we improve? We have a fairly rigorous and conservative training program. But unfortunately, the nature of our personnel is that they are all young, inexperienced drivers, who have never driven an emergency vehicle before coming to us.

We have even considered hiring out and getting an instructor to teach the Corps. the full EVOC class, practical and everything. Trouble is, our budget isn't very big, and it would require us to take our one main ambulance out of service, drive one hour (each way) to the Northern Bronx, just to find a parking lot big enough to set up an obstacle course. We also have a second ambulance, which we don't run since we don't have the required call volume to justify keeping two crews fully staffed 24/7. It is, fortunately older, and unfortunately, smaller, than our main 2003 Horton Type III. Upside: No one cares that we ding it, Downside: it is not a good training platform. It seems to be asking for trouble requiring our new drivers to learn on a smaller ambulance. I can just hear it now: "Well, he got into the accident because he didn't realize that his vehicle is actually 2 feet longer than he thought it was."

The conclusion that everyone seems to draw at the end is that we're just going to have to do the best with what we've got, and accept the fact that we won't ever cure our problem. We will always get into the minor accidents, and perhaps, even small dings and scratches to the paint job are OK, just so long as we never get into a major accident, no laws are broken, and we NEVER hurt someone because of poor driver training.

The End.

...Now where did I put my Probie Whipping Stick?

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Crew Chief -- At Last!!!

As of tonight, Yours Truly has finally been promoted to Crew Chief! Ahhh, three long years...