Instead of offering up a teaching tidbit, I’d like to take this post in another direction.
I’ll offer up a story and you can tell me if I did the right thing or not.
This story is true. I’ll tell it to you exactly as it happened. It happened about 10 years ago. After the incident, I drove away and didn’t think too much more about it. I may have never thought about it again if I hadn’t read a story over at EMS1 about a medic who used his lights and sirens to pull over a bad driver and berate her on the side of the road. The medic has now sat before a review board and will most likely face a suspension.
Before I tell this story, let me make it clear that I believe that this guy acted improperly and I am not attempting to justify his actions. But it did get me thinking. When is it OK to use your lights and sirens outside of the context of a medical emergency?
And then I thought about John Cortez and I…and the drunk dude.
John and I were driving down a quiet three lane road that ran through a commercial area in our district when we came upon a mid-sized four-door vehicle driving slowly and swerving back and forth across the road. You may have seen the pattern before. The car would slowly drift across the road until it began to run off the road and then the driver would over-correct and come back onto the road, drifting to the other side and then repeating the pattern.
While we were both fairly certain that the driver was intoxicated, I don’t think either of us ruled out the possibility that there could have been some other sort of medical issue responsible for the drivers erratic driving. We fell back to a position about fifty yards behind the swerving vehicle and radioed for police assistance. We reported our location and direction and continued to follow and monitor the situation.
After a few minutes a car approached from behind and passed us and the swerving vehicle. The swerving vehicle came close to striking the passing vehicle as it drove by to the left. That’s when we decided to turn the lights on. We turned on our overhead lights and the standard code-three lighting ensemble. We left the siren off. Our intention wasn’t to elicit a certain behavior out of the driver in front of us. We were more concerned with alerting passing drivers to the possible danger on the road ahead.
Shortly after turning on the lights our swerving driver started moving to the right side of the road. He continued off the road and struck a guard-rail at low speed and came to a stop. I got on the radio and alerted dispatch to the accident location. We gave a full description of the vehicle and then both climbed out of our rig to approach the driver from either side of the vehicle.
Let me clarify, because I’m sure you’re probably thinking it, none of us can predict the future and it’s impossible to say what would have happened if we had left our light off. But if I had to guess, I would say that our lights probably caused the driver to drive into the guard rail. While I think he probably would have crashed eventually, I don’t think he would have crashed at that moment. I don’t know if we did him a favor or a disservice contributing to his crash at that place and that time. It’s impossible to tell.
I’m also well aware that we could have influenced him to do something even more dangerous. He could have speed up. He could have entered oncoming traffic and hurt or killed someone else. We could not predict all the possibilities when we switched on those lights. We had to make a judgment call and we went with the lights.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Back car-side with our erratic driver…
I was the first one to speak to the driver. I don’t recall my exact words but I know that I introduced myself and that I made it clear that I and my partner were medical personnel. I offered our help. While speaking to the driver I could smell a strong odor of metabolized alcohol on the his breath. I asked politely if we could place him in the back of our medic unit and check him out. He gladly accepted.
In the back of my rig, I checked the driver’s blood sugar and gave him a thorough head-to-toe assessment. During my assessment, our local police department arrived on scene and my partner briefed him on what we had seen and what we had done. I escorted the intoxicated driver out of the back of my rig and into the custody of our local police officer.
Looking back now, I have questions about what John and I did that day. I think you can make many intelligent arguments both for and against several of our actions. I could detail them for you, but I’m more interested in how you feel.
Did John and I do the right thing? If not, what should we have done instead? When is it OK to turn on the lights or use the siren outside of the context of a medical emergency?
How could you not think you did the right thing? You may have intercepted a life and death emergency. Yes, you stopped a drunk, and no that is not your job. But, you saw the potential to intervene on an obvious impairment, whatever the reason, which you could not know until you assessed the driver. To doubt the “ok” of this to me screams the over complicated of right and wrong! You weren’t making an arrest, you were evaluating the obvious impairment which could have been critical.
we can what-if this to death, but the fact remains that he ended up stopping and did not injure or kill anyone else.
if we concern ourselves too much with what these morons WOULD do, cops would stop trying to pull anyone over altogether, and no one would ever get caught.
So true we could what it this to death! The fact is you stopped him before he killed someone. The reality and the go by the rules medic in me says to never do something like that, as you said it could have gone alot of different ways. I think this is one of those scenarios where you had to be there to decide what you would really do. It also could have gone the way of you just followed him until he plowed into some poor unsuspecting driver and killed them.
By the way, I love this website, thank you for taking the time to create it and keep it up.
I share the sentiments of the other writers. Your intentions were noble and the outcome was positive.
In an alternative universe the driver could have chosen to flee the appearance of lights in his rearview mirror and the results could have been tragic.
On a semi-related note … unfortunately high speed chases do result in death and injury. Emergency responders in Wisconsin are chewing on this story, http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20120710/GPG0101/307090157/Milwaukee-woman-injured-in-crash-with-police-car
I’m a little late to the party, but I wanted to give my two cents. In my opinion, what you did was wrong (mostly my opinion and because I’d like to play devils advocate). When I first started my current EMS job they gave us a EVOC class as part of our orientation and this topic was brought up. They told us to just alert PD and get a good description. They told us because it could be construed as you impersonating a cop, which is a felony. You do not have the right to stop a vehicle. That isn’t in your description. That may not have been your intent, but very plausible in court. As well as the numerous other negative outcomes you’ve no doubt considered. I’m glad none of those outcomes played out in this and everything turned out okay in the end. I think the best thing to have done is to get a good description and perhaps follow the vehicle at a safe distance so that if a crash were to happen, you would be right there to respond.
steve, i have gone to your site for the past few years for advice or for some good stories to bring to my guys to pick there brains, but you never know what is going to happen, like you said there was an impaired driver, etoh or medical, but at the time you did not know that, so seeing if he was ok in my opinion was warranted… now you also said that you believe that your red lights caused him to hit the guard rail. That could have been great so he would not have killed someone else or drove through a building. Now on the other hand your lights could of caused him to go off the road and over an embankment to his death. hmmmm, but either way you did what you thought was right at the time, cause there was some type of emergency going on. either way weather it was your red lights that caused him to crash, or the cops blues that were going to get him eventually that caused him to crash… he was going to hit something eventually. thanks for the great site, and keep it going.
m an Emergency Medical Technician in Maryland and i would just like to say driving with lights and sirens in school zones are a no go!
little kids in class will be all haywire just hearing those lights and sirens in class.
transport back in 1993, it was a transport for a stemi, we were on our way to prince george’s hospital while coming across a school zone. i was in the back pushing drugs and maintaing his airway and monitoring him. my partner was in the front and all of a sudden he starts yelling.
we had hit a kid, we were running with lights and sirens in a school zone
going way to fast and we couldn’t control our speed of slowing down.
long story short, we were sued and my partner was thrown in jail for involuntary man slaughter in the state of virginia.
i have quit ems ever since
because of my fear.
dont run with lights and sirens just dont do it! especially within a school zone! obey all rules or you might just turn out like me and my partner.