You are woken up at night by the siren of a passing fire engine and ask yourself: „Is that necessary, nobody is on the street at night anyway?“. You’ll find the answer here.
Highest urgency required!
The fire brigade is only alerted in the event of an emergency. In order to ward off the dangers, great haste is required – emergency vehicles are granted special rights for this. This is regulated by law in the Road Traffic Act (StVO):
§ 35 StVO special rights (excerpt)
(1) The Federal Armed Forces, the Federal Police, the fire brigade, civil protection, the police and the customs service are exempt from the provisions of this regulation insofar as this is urgently required to fulfill sovereign tasks.
[…]
(5a) Rescue service vehicles are exempt from the provisions of this Ordinance if the greatest urgency is required to save human life or prevent serious damage to health.
The StVO also regulates how emergency vehicles must indicate their special rights:
§ 38 Blue flashing light and yellow flashing light (excerpt)
(1) Blue flashing light together with the emergency horn may only be used if the greatest urgency is required to save human life or to avert serious damage to health, to avert a danger to public security or order, pursue fugitives or obtain significant property.
It orders:
„All other road users must immediately clear the way“.
Legal Obligation
The two paragraphs from the Road Traffic Regulations make it clear: The fire brigade is legally obliged to use blue lights and sirens at the same time if they want to claim the right of way.
A driver of an emergency vehicle is therefore negligent if he does not use a siren when driving with blue lights flashing. If there is an accident, he can be held liable even if he is not at fault.
We hope for your understanding if you should be woken up during one of our mission trips. It is not without reason that emergency vehicles, including those of the police and rescue services, drive through the streets with „Tatütata“.
We are also there for you
Please remember: You can continue to sleep – our emergency services, who were lying in their beds minutes ago, are now on their way to an emergency and also have to go to work in the morning, will not be able to do it anytime soon.
If you ever need the help of the fire brigade at night, you can count on us. Whether others are awakened from their sleep is not important to you. On the contrary: every second that the fire brigade gets to you earlier counts.