A History of How Ambulance Lights Save Lives

For as ear-piercing as ambulance sirens are, you’d think they’d be better alert systems. Truth is: they’re shockingly ineffective. Drivers register the sound only at close proximity and at very low speeds. Guessing from which direction the ambulance will appear is always tricky, too—especially when the new Daft Punk is turned up really loud. In fact, a recent study found that visual cues—rather than audio ones—account for 90 percent of how regular ol’ drivers register the presence of an ambulance on the road. So when ambulances need to get drivers out of the way quickly, it’s lights—not sirens—that are truly effective.

In the history of mobile emergency signaling, lights were a late addition. When New York City launched its first ambulance service in 1869, the horse-drawn vehicles sounded a gong to get folks (traveling around four miles per hour) to pull over. In 1909, the Albany-based James Cunningham, Son & Company launched the first commercial gas-powered auto ambulance, but its specialized lighting was on the interior, in the form of a few domed lamps used to illuminate the ill.

Get Out of the Way: A History of How Ambulance Lights Save Lives

---

Rights to all content (text, images, videos etc.) with post source. If you think these are wrongly attributed email us