| The purpose of the study was to assess and analyze the current perceptions and awareness of fire chiefs regarding emergency vehicle safety. The secondary purpose was to discover if any differences in perceptions or awareness existed between career and volunteer fire chiefs in regard to emergency vehicle safety.;The population for the study consisted of active career and volunteer fire chiefs in Arkansas during the summer of 2006. This was a mixed methods study that utilized a survey and semi-structured open-ended interviews. Questions consisted of awareness and perceptions factors regarding emergency vehicle safety returning from or responding to a call. These factors included but were not limited to seatbelt use, speeding, training, SOPs, apparatus maintenance, inspection, and design.;The collected data were statistically analyzed using independent samples t-test, mean, and descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were used to enhance the quantitative findings.;The data revealed that there were significant differences in perceptions among volunteer and career chiefs in the areas of wearing a seatbelt, apparatus maintenance, apparatus inspection, and firefighter attitude. There were also significance differences in awareness among volunteer and career chiefs in the areas of SOPs, speeding, training to NFPA standards, apparatus maintenance, seatbelt use and functionality, firefighter fatalities or lawsuits in your department, personal accountability for an accident or an apparatus, and the importance of a national initiative to improve firefighter safety.;The study indicates a gap in emergency vehicle safety perceptions and awareness between volunteer and career fire chiefs. Additional resources or training may need to be developed or revised in order to reduce the number of line-of-duty firefighter fatalities resulting from MVAs responding to or returning from calls. |
