Originally Posted by
glad rag
Good point about differential lighting but would this not require driver training to the requisite standard ie to the same level as the other emergency drivers??
Doctors on an emergency call use green lights. They have no training and the green lights offer no privileges to disregard road traffic laws, but are an indication to other road users of the urgency, and for other drivers to give way where possible. (They still have to stick to speed limit and obey all road signs and traffic lights.)
Something similar like that perhaps?
It doesn't necessarily need to be the same level of high speed blue light driving, although yes additional training would never be a bad thing.
It is fine taxiing a plane at 30kts down the taxiway, so if the taxiway is clear it is surely safe for a car to be going down at 50mph, I'd hardly say that would require particularly advanced training.
It's if they'd start doing unexpected things, such as not giving way at the junctions, not sticking to marked roads etc.
Every airside driver knows you give way to moving aircraft, but maybe there needs to be other levels of priority for other vehicles, without making it too complicated.
Where possible and safe we'll always give way (in our aircraft) to emergency vehicles needing to cross the taxiway/apron etc, such as an ambulance going to an aircraft, or police going to somewhere in a hurry. Although ATC Ground controller is usually way ahead of the game there anyway.
But as far as cars/vans/etc go, an emergency (risk to life or of injury) response clearly needs the highest priority. Then urgent airfield ops (such as an urgent runway inspection or FOD clearing) is very time critical and can't take 15 minutes to get to where they need to be waiting for crossings etc (although it's not urgently life-or-death, and if it HAS to be done then they can assure safety by closing the runway and stopping approaches, however this is clearly not ideal, especially at an airport like Heathrow or Gatwick... a few minutes of runway closure can cause backlogs that take the rest of the day to clear and have knock-on effects all around Europe, especially in summer!)