- Joined
- Mar 16, 2012
- Posts
- 2,210
- Reaction score
- 3,651
- Location
- Midwest
- Ram Year
- 2012, 2021
- Engine
- 5.7, 6.4
Wait, you mean you thought it was cool to both speed and put lights and sirens on a personal vehicle. What were you thinking? You should know that's not ok. As far as the actual fire truck I totally feel for that situation! Especially the injured responders! Your truck itself, however, not so much. I'm happy you weren't injured, but honestly you should be ticketed for both driving and setting your personal truck up to represent an emergency vehicle.
Generally speaking, nothing in the law requires an emergency vehicle to be a fleet vehicle or owned by the agency. Instead it requires authorization from the agency and it must conform to the state definition of emergency vehicle in terms of colored lights (for example, my state reserves all blues for volunteer fire, you could not have blues and reds), siren, etc.
There are a non-zero number of small or rural police departments where the reserves use private vehicles and it's very common among volunteer fire and ems members, although in my state they can use lights but no sirens and can't exceed the posted speed limit even during an "emergency" response.
I work for a very large agency, one that is self-insured, and occasionally during very poor weather conditions officers have been authorized POVs for on duty work and the agency picks up the liability for that time frame.