As with car lights (white in the front headlights, red in the rear, and amber for turn signals), which are a communication system between vehicles, ambulances have a series of warnings that drivers must be aware of in order to know how to maneuver and open the space forming the so-called ’emergency corridor’.
Ambulances have three kinds of warnings: passive visual, active visual, and acoustic. Passive signs are part of the vehicle design with bright colors to attract the attention of other road users. The word ambulance must be ‘seen’ backwards in order to be read in rear view mirrors.
In Colombia, they must also carry out two warnings, depending on the type of emergency they can attend to. Basic Assistance Transport (TAB) and Medicalized Assistance Transport (TAM). The basic ones must have among their staff a prehospital care technologist or professional technician in prehospital care or nursing assistant with a basic life support training certificate and a driver with a first aid training certificate.
The medicalized personnel must be made up of a doctor, nurse or prehospital care technologist or nursing assistant who have a certificate of training in advanced life support. As in the basic ones, the driver must have first aid training.
The active warnings are the lights (beacons and strobes). Its colors correspond to an international code: blue, red and amber (yellow). The color combination is called “code” and it varies according to the message that the driver wants to convey. Red means an emergency situation, yellow is a warning to draw attention and drivers to use caution.
The flashing of the lights is used to attract the attention of drivers, to get them to move to the side of the road or to warn that an ambulance is in a dangerous place on the road.
Finally, there are the acoustic warnings, known as ‘sirens’. There are three emergency tones. A long beep, short beep, and intermittent beep.
The long tone is used on highways and avenues and alerts to the presence of the ambulance to give continuity to its movement on the journey. The short tone means that the ambulance is approaching an intersection (with or without a traffic light) for motorists to stop. And the intermittent tone is used when there is traffic during the journey or more than one ambulance goes to the same service. There is a final, louder, shorter tone that is used in extreme cases when drivers are not moving.
When you hear the ambulance alarms, move to the sides, thus forming the so-called emergency corridor, a lane used by the ambulance and reducing the arrival and transfer times of patients or emergency care.
