Gordon Graham here with another effort at giving you something to think about as you visit this great website. Paul and Ted give me an opportunity to ramble on about risk — hence the clever name for this column — “Risky Ramblings.” I am preparing this on election eve, and there is so much going on tonight and who knows what the future will bring. 

And to be very frank with you, if you would have asked me last year who the president-elect was going to be on November 5, 2008, I would have told you that it would be Mrs. Clinton. There was no doubt in my mind last year that she would have won the Democratic nomination and the fall election.

I am sure that history will show us what went wrong in her campaign — what risks were not recognized, what was not prioritized and who failed to do what which led to her being defeated. Political Risk Management is not my forte, but it will be an interesting read. Life is filled with risk, but the smart people are “recognizing, prioritizing and mobilizing” to address the risks you face in life and in your “risk-centric” job as a firefighter.

And as long as I am on this topic, allow me to commend a book to you. Nick Tasler wrote a piece this year entitled The Impulse Factor. And what prompted me to tell you about this tonight? Well, I am out of town and just had dinner (always eat in a restaurant, not in your room while on the road — too many people choke while dining by themselves . . . but I am digressing here), and back to the room, I said to myself, "I am going to write a piece for Ted and Paul"; and so I turn on the TV and get past the election stuff and find a true piece of Americana on the small screen — “Deal or No Deal.” 

And immediately I default to Tasler’s work, The Impulse Factor. What is your level of acceptable risk? And how do you make decisions, particularly those that need to be made quickly without a lot of thought. One of the examples Tasler uses is this. Here is an envelope with $1,000 in it, and you can have it right now.  Or . . . you can take a chance with the second envelope I have where there is a 50/50 chance that it has either $2,000 in it or $1.00. Now this seems like a no-brainer to me: I would take the $1,000 quicker than the time it takes a piston to travel the length of the cylinder at 10,000 rpm.

And guess what? According to Tasler, three out of four of you would do the same! Which means that one out of four will run the risk of walking away with a buck. And back to the “Deal or No Deal” analogy. Last week one of the contestants had a “bank” offer of $609,000 — and that would be $609,000, a guaranteed $609,000, or they could go with one more case — one with $1,000,000 in it or the other with $1.00. 

Now, if you want to talk about an even quicker decision, I would jump on this offer quicker than a particle beatin’ feet down the Stanford Linear Accelerator — of which you can see this two-mile long device crossing under the 280 Freeway near Palo Alto. And many of you are familiar with this particular episode of DOND.  The contestant went for the million and ended up with a buck.

So why I am rambling on with all of this stuff about risk? Because that is the name of the column, silly! There are a lot of “uncertainties” in life, and the smart people are weighing options, probabilities, frequency, severity and all sorts of other things simultaneously. 

With this in mind, here is something I really want you to think about. What are the risks involved in running red lights while in route to a call? And I will give you a hint up front: If you do this often enough, sooner or later it will end up in a tragedy.

This is nothing new. Over the last decade, year, month, week, I have been continually reading about fire apparatus getting into collisions while traversing through intersections. In fact, this week (and it's only Monday) I have read about three of these tragic events that have ended up in someone dying. 

And if you have been to any of my live programs recently, I have been talking about the mishap that the Dallas Fire Department had earlier this year when they were traversing an intersection against a red light and they T-boned Brian Loncar in his Bentley automobile.   

And if you are not familiar with Mr. Loncar, he is the No. 1 plaintiff lawyer in the Great State of Texas, you know,  the guy with all the billboards with the “If you have been injured in a traffic accident, come see me” line. Now of all the people to crash into, this guy would be low on my list. You just don’t T-bone plaintiff lawyers!

So what should you do about this? Allow me to digress again, and I will, because this is my column. When I was a young cop (and that was thirty-five years ago), I had this philosophy that “no one would ever get away from me.” Not only did I have this belief, I had a big Dodge with the big 440; and I regularly exercised this belief. "No one gets away!”  And when they tried, I would chase them and chase them and chase them until they finally crashed — too often into an innocent third party – and even after doing this a number of times, I still did not get it!

I don’t remember exactly when it hit me (a little pun there), but chasing people is filled with risk. So many things can go wrong in a high-speed chase, and the consequences can indeed be severe, up to and including death, serious injury, and a possible criminal indictment. And the link to your job as a fire service professional becomes instantly apparent. Intersection collisions can and do result in major adverse consequences.

And indeed, if you are a public safety agency, shouldn’t your first duty be assuring public safety? I am confident (perhaps hopeful is a better word) that you have a policy that addresses how to proceed through an intersection. My hope is that your policy is clear that when you come upon a red light, you stop and check for ongoing traffic from all directions and then proceed with caution. And the underlined word in the preceding sentence has a literal translation of “the cessation of all forward movement." 

So I will assume that you have the well written policy that requires the “stop” thing prior to going through the intersection. Now it gets down to “implementation.”  I have talked about this extensively over the last few decades. You can have the best policies in the world, but if they are not being taken seriously, they have no value. 

Rules without enforcement are just nice words. This is true regarding your harassment policy, your “two in – two out” policy, your backing policy and any other policy that controls the behavior of personnel. These policies — all of them — have got to be taken seriously. 

Sadly though, sometimes we allow deviations from the policy, and soon the deviations become the norm. When you have enough pieces of apparatus running red lights Warp 9, sooner or later you will have a major tragedy. And then everyone sits around after the fact stating, “I knew that was going to happen!”

So rather than making that silly “I knew that was going to happen” statement after the fact, why don’t we put a renewed focus on safe driving and getting to the given event without blowing the red lights. The stakes are simply too high — the level of risk unacceptable, and the consequences are so severe when they occur.

I am winding down now so here are some thoughts. If you are the chief officer (or close to that position), make sure you have a good policy in place that properly addresses this issue of importance. If you are the company officer, make sure your crew knows the policy; and make sure that you are enforcing this rule. And if you are the apparatus operator, know the policy and follow the darn thing. Please!

And going full circle on this, here is a choice for you. You can come to a full stop, check in all directions and then proceed with caution (this would be the envelope with $1,000 dollars in it). Or you can run the light and take the chance (and who knows what the odds are here) that you will cut ten seconds off your response time or you can end up in some tragedy that will cause you grief for the rest of your life. 

The choice is yours. Please choose wisely!

Anyhow, I am running out of steam here, so I will say goodbye for now. And I do sincerely thank you for all your great work. As always, please take the time to work safely.

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