On March fifth Riggs Ambulance Service invited members of the Merced County news media to spend a few hours with a group of young men and women who were being trained to work with a new safety device. Road Safety’s SafeForce System has now been installed on the entire fleet of twenty-two Riggs ambulances. This high tech monitoring device, (which is sometimes referred to colloquially as a ‘black box’), is intended to remind ambulance operators to stay within predetermined parameters when operating their assigned vehicles.

The Riggs ambulance crews were being introduced to the SafeForce system as part of a scheduled Emergency Vehicle Operator Course. More commonly known as “EVOC training”, the course consists of a series of driving tasks that ambulance drivers must be able to perform.

I accepted Riggs’s invitation and availed myself of the opportunity to briefly join one of the classes and take my turn behind the wheel of an ambulance on the EVOC course, which is maintained at the former Castle Air Force Base near Merced.

One student exits the ambulance being used for the slow-speed portion of the EVOC training as another prepares to take the helm of the vehicle.

The EVOC course consists of two main areas; one is a very slow-speed course where students are taught ‘the parameters of the car – what the car will do and what it will not do’. On the slow-speed course students must perform a series of driving trials, which include precision parking, a decreasing radius serpentines, parallel parking, and something simply called ‘the alley’ where backing over cones the first time through seems somewhat endemic to the learning process.

The other half of the EVOC course is called the ‘road course’ and it is thought to be a lot more ‘fun’. The road course is held at Castle on streets that have been fenced off for the use of the Sheriff’s Department who in turn allow Riggs to do their training there as well. The ‘road course’ includes driving longer distances at higher speeds on ‘city streets’ where students weave through obstacles and perform faster cornering, etc.

Greg Petersen, the Operations Supervisor and Training Coordinator for Riggs, was my instructor for the slow-speed course. Petersen has been running Riggs’s EVOC over at Castle for two years now and has been training people to drive ambulances for about twenty. Greg noted, “When [students] leave the road course today they are not going to be ‘masters’ at driving an ambulance, but they are going to know where the pivot points are and what an ambulance will and will not do, and most of all they are gonna know where RoadSafety goes off – and that’s what we want.”

As I buckled myself in and adjusted the driver’s seat of the ambulance, Mr. Petersen explained a bit about the SafeForce system. First I got ‘fobbed in’. Basically, ‘fobbing in’ means taking the “driver id tag”, (a high-tech key that looks a bit like a bent plastic tongue depressor with a ultra large hearing aid battery fastened to one end), and pressing it into a “driver id receiver port” below the steering wheel of the ambulance. When a beep is heard, the driver is basically logged into the onboard SafeForce system.

Petersen then explained that when I started taking the ambulance through the course I would likely be hearing several different sounds from a speaker above my head. These sounds are escalating warnings that remind the operator to alter his driving as necessary.

As I began driving, Mr. Petersen noted that I’d hear clicks if I was getting close to too many g’s and beeps if I operated the ambulance in a way that went past the allowable g-force parameters. I also found out that if someone does not ‘spot’ for you as you back up, you get hit with ‘THE TONE’. Petersen said, “We try to make the sound as irritating as possible so guys won’t want to set it off.”

Well, in my experience, they accomplished their goal.

One of the parameters programmed into the system has to do with operating the ambulance as it goes backwards. Riggs’ driving policy requires that any Riggs ambulance which is backing up must have a ‘spotter’ or ‘ground guide’ watching the back of the ambulance as it reverses. The spotter must depress one of two switches to indicate to the driver that the spotter is in place. During one of my reverse trips through ‘the alley’ my spotter failed to depress the switch and I backed up anyway. When I did so, I violated Riggs’ spotter policy and I rightfully earned the dreaded ‘tone’. If you will excuse the hyperbole, the tone is not unlike having a nagging mother-in-law scraping her nails over a chalkboard while your baby is wailing – you just want to do whatever you need to in order to mollify the situation and make the squealing stop.

Trainee actuates the exterior 'spotter switch'.

After I completed the slow-speed course I was escorted over to the higher speed course and was introduced to Manuel, another driving instructor. I made my way around the fenced-off streets deliberately setting off the system a number of times. As I pulled into the parking place after driving the road course, Manuel joked that if this had been real-world driving that I’d be getting met by management about then.

Driving an ambulance with the Road Safety SafeForce System operational was interesting to say the least. For me it was similar to driving down a road where you see a police car. You know someone is watching so you are naturally inclined to take it easy. And if you don’t? According to their press release, “If the audio warning is ignored and the driver continues to drive the vehicle in a dangerous manner, the “Black Box” produces a steady tone. The steady tone alerts the driver that the unsafe occurrence has been recorded and will continue to record into the driver grading system until the driver has corrected the unsafe action”

The system monitors all kinds of things. According to the press release, “With the Road Safety “Black Box,” driving parameters such as speed, rate of acceleration / deceleration, and how the vehicle is driven while cornering are all part of the SafeForce ™ driver grading system. If a driver operates a Riggs Ambulance outside of the acceptable ranges of these parameters, they hear an immediate audio warning. This audio warning system gives drivers a chance to take corrective action in their own driving performance.” Petersen also noted that such things as seat belts, brakes, speed, gas, red lights and siren were monitored and I would later find out that the system also monitors RPM’s, turn signals, spotter switches, and g-forces.

Apparently, The SafeForce system also ‘phones home’. According to the press release, “All vehicle and driver information is transmitted wirelessly then downloaded to a computer into a database. The database reports allow Riggs Ambulance Managers to monitor driver performance individually and in a comparison to other drivers. SafeForce ™ reports quickly identify those drivers in need of additional training helping them improve their driving performance.”

The SafeForce system has reportedly already had a positive effect. Greg Petersen said, “What [SafeForce] has done is that it has slowed our crews down, not to the point where we don’t make it on-time, our compliance has actually gone up for county contract.” When asked why compliance would have gone up he replied simply “I don’t know. It’s slower driving but its safer driving. It really works well. We have not had a major incident since we put RoadSafety in.”

For more information about the Safe Force system visit the Road Safety International website at http://www.roadsafety.com/. For more information on Riggs Ambulance Service visit http://riggsambulance.com/.

Trainee pushes the exterior 'spotter switch' on an ambulance that is preparing to back up during the Riggs EVOC course.. It is the policy of Riggs Ambulance Service that any time an ambulance is driven in reverse, a spotter or guide must stand at the rear to safely guide the driver.

Students are challenged with a small forest of cones and obstacles.

Backing up safely is stressed and most of the challenges that students drive forward into, they will also be expected to reverse out of.

A student resets cones that had been toppled during one of the Riggs EVOC course trials. The instructor can be seen grinning from the passenger seat as driver/student clasps her hand over her mouth.

A smiling stuent pulls her rig to a stop after completing one of the trials in the Riggs Ambulance Service EVOC course.

A quick debriefing after one of the EVOC Training sessions.

Riggs Ambulance's EVOC students smiling after taking the Emergency Vehicle Operator Course which was given at the former Castle Air Force Base near Merced on Friday. Riggs Ambulance Service is the paramedic provider for all of Merced County.

If everyone in Los Banos would just take 1 or 2 hours a month to do something to help their neighborhood or their community we could truly make Los Banos the gem of the valley.

The above is only my personal opinion and I strongly encourage readers to seek out more information from expert sources. Copyright 2010