We all know how dangerous driving here in Arizona is with our free range cows, especially at night. People from other areas and think letting cows run around in nuts.
But in Washington, Idaho, and Montana we had a different problem, herds of deer, elk, and bison on the road. In Montana we would have several hit on any weekend. In Washington I've been hit by more deer than I've hit. Scares the hell out of you, bam and you get broadsided by a deer.
FYI more people are killed trying to avoid a deer than hitting the deer. Bison, Moose, and Cows are bigger and can do significantly more damage....
What if you have a life threatening medical emergency and the LMRFD ambulance hits a cow in route? This would increase the response time from minutes to hours, seriously injure the crew and damage our ambulance. With our long response times depending on the condition of the crew after an accident, it could be some time before anyone realized something was wrong.
Today FLIR Forward-Looking Infrared devices are common and much less expensive than older units used by law enforcement and the military.
A unit like the FLIR PathfindIR II Object Detection System cost about one ambulance call $2500. This VIDEO of the Pathfinder FLIR System shows the importance of FLIR in a rural ambulance like ours where being involved in an accident putting the ambulance out of survice and injuring firefighters is not acceptable
Living in Alaska, moose, caribou, bear, and other large animals were often seen on the road and yet not hit as often. When they were, the state had/has an awesome program through the nutritional assistance program and the fish and game-you call in your accident and fish and game would come out and dress the animal on site. Then whomever is next on the state list for meat would get called to see if their freezer could handle all the meat. This is also done for poached fish. This is how I ended up with poached sockeye salmon from a Japanese boat.
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