The problem here as I see it is an educational one. When a retained firefighter commences employment with the fire service, it is made clear that to be employed as a retained firefighter, they must live within the appropriate area in order to attend incidents within the required time frame whilst TRAVELLING AT NORMAL ROAD SPEEDS.
I appreciate that there are many extremely keen retained firefighters out there who wish to respond to incidents as quick as possible and I admire this quality immensly, but it is vitally important that they get to the station safely and without putting anyone at risk.
Fire services often lack an understanding of what goes through the firefighter's mind when they get called out from home and the rush of adrenaline that they get and often accidents that occur because of these situations are dealt with purely through discipline proceedures. What would be better is if fire authorities looked at the problem and educated our firefighters better as to their reasons why it is important that all firefighters attending stations from home, work or where ever do so in a manner which will allow them to get on the pump and fulfill their role efficiently and effectively. If the problem is that some firefighters never get on the pump because of the distance they live, a solution may be to organise call ot groups, similar to watches on wholetime stations. This creates a fair and equal opportunity for eveyone and spreads the experience amongst the crew.
If a fire authority allowed individuals to have their own blue lights on their private vehicles, they would be advocating their personnel to drive in the same manner as appliances en route to incidents. For this to happen, the authority would have to give each individual efad training, without this training, the authority would be acting negligably and would be liable in a court of law following any accident or incident. In addition to this, every firefighter would have to have a different car insurance policy which would allow this and who would pay for this and my final point is, who would ensure on the fire authorities behalf that your vehicle is servicable and safe to drive as an emergency response vehicle. The cost implications would be so high to cover all of this, that the authority would have to make a large increase in council tax payments. At the end of the day there will be huge protests to this as the authorities have to justify every penny spent. It is important to remember that under the Freedom of Information Act, anyone can ask where their council tax money is being spent and if the public found what could equate to millions of pounds being spent in this way when it clearly states that firefighters will respond from home at normal road speeds.
As a former retained firefighter, I fully understand the frustration of being held up on the way to the station, but it is imperative to maintain a safe environment for everyone, that even means the firefighter attending station to go to a shout. I don't feel that there is any sound argument for giving retained firefighters blue lights for their personal cars and if there are any exceptions to this, they should be made on an individual basis after an in depth investigation in to the positives and negatives of this. Once again I applaud the firefighters that are keen to do a good job on behalf of the people they serve but I firmly believe that the rule is there for a good reason.
Sorry if this message upsets you but I think it puts the argument across fairly.
