SWP - Personal Vehicle Response (Volunteers)

Driving a personal vehicle to the station or to a scene in answer to a page or app alert, and parking it when you get there. It applies to every volunteer and paid-on-call member who responds from home, work or anywhere else in a vehicle the department does not own, and to career members who are recalled in personal vehicles. About a quarter of the volunteers who died responding to or returning from a call in the last decade were in privately owned vehicles, and three in four of the responding and returning deaths in the most recent year were volunteers (USFA, 2025).

• Collision from speed, from treating the page as a licence to drive differently, from running intersections, and from passing.
• Fatigue: responding after a full work day, at night, or after a previous call.
• Distraction: the pager, the app, the radio, the phone, the mental rehearsal of the call.
• Weather and rural roads: ice, deer, gravel, no shoulders, no lighting.
• Following an apparatus too closely; racing an apparatus to the scene.
• Arriving at a scene and parking in the live lane, between the apparatus and traffic, or blocking the apparatus and the ambulance.
• Stepping out of a personal vehicle onto a roadway without a vest.
• Uninsured use: an insurer who was not told the vehicle is used to respond.
• A courtesy light that other drivers do not understand, or that the member believes confers a right of way it does not.

A roadworthy, insured, registered vehicle; a seat belt worn; a Class 2 high-visibility vest in the vehicle; a mounted pager or phone; a flashlight; a courtesy light only where the province permits it and the department has authorized it in writing for that member and vehicle; the member’s bunker gear carried only where the department allows gear in personal vehicles (the contamination control program may prohibit it: Decontamination and Contamination Control Program).

Every responding member holds a valid licence for the vehicle, has read and signed this procedure, and renews the acknowledgement annually. No special training is required to drive a personal vehicle lawfully; what the department asks is that members do exactly that.

1. Decision point: are you fit to drive? If you have been awake longer than the department’s limit, have had any alcohol or an impairing drug or medication, are unwell, or are too upset to drive well, do not respond. Tell the officer by radio or app if you can; nobody will ask for a reason (Policy - Fatigue and Hours of Work).
2. Read the page once. Decide where you are going (station or scene, per the department’s rule for your role) before you move. Mount the pager or phone; you will not touch it again while driving.
3. Seat belt on. Courtesy light on only if the province permits it and you are authorized; it asks other drivers for courtesy and gives you nothing.

4. You have no exemptions. Obey every speed limit, every signal, every stop sign and every rule of the road as if there were no call. There is no emergency mode in a personal vehicle. The call will be handled by the people who arrive; it will not be handled by you if you crash.
5. Decision point: is the road or the weather worse than you expected? Slow to conditions; go to the station instead of the scene; or stop and let the department know you are not coming. All three are right answers.
6. Do not follow an apparatus closer than the distance the applicable traffic law sets for other drivers, commonly 150 m (J30 Emergency Vehicles, Drivers and Licensing), and never try to keep up with one or pass it. Do not follow another responding member closely either.
7. Do not use the phone, the radio or the app while moving. If dispatch or the officer needs you, pull over.
8. Railway crossings, school zones and intersections exactly as on any other drive.

9. Park in the member parking area, never on the apron, never in front of a bay door, never where an apparatus will need to swing. Walk to the bay with the apparatus doors and the apron in view; the apparatus has the right of way over you.

10. Park well beyond the incident on the same side, downstream of the last emergency vehicle, off the travelled lane, never between the apparatus and traffic and never blocking the ambulance or a hydrant. On a two-lane road, park where the officer directs or at least 50 m past the scene.
11. Vest on before you open the door. Exit on the side away from traffic. Walk to the officer on the protected side of the apparatus and report in for accountability before you do anything.
12. Your vehicle stays where it is until the officer releases it; it is not moved during the incident to make room.

13. Drive home in the same way you drove to the call. If the call was long or hard, say so to the officer before you leave; the department will find you a ride or a place to rest rather than have you drive tired (Policy - Fatigue and Hours of Work).
14. Report any near miss, collision or close call on the way to or from the call before the end of the day; it is reviewed for learning only.

• Collision on the way: stop; you are now a civilian driver at a collision; care for anyone hurt; call 911; tell dispatch you are not coming; the department treats it as a program event and reviews it for learning; statutory reporting if you are injured in the course of duty (J08 Incident Reporting and Investigation).
• Breakdown: off the road, hazard lights, out of the vehicle on the protected side, tell dispatch.
• You arrive and the scene is on a highway with no block yet: stay in your vehicle, well downstream, until an apparatus blocks; do not walk the shoulder in traffic to reach the incident.
• Another member driving dangerously: tell the officer afterward; the learning review asks what pressures made that feel necessary, and the department fixes the pressures.

The signed acknowledgement and the annual renewal are filed with the member’s record; the insurer notification is confirmed in writing once; personal vehicle collisions, near misses and close calls on response are reported on Form - Vehicle Collision Report or Form - Near-Miss and Good-Catch Report and counted in the Apparatus, Driving and Roadway team’s quarterly indicator worksheet as program events; the department records which members are authorized for a courtesy light and for which vehicle.

Delivered in person to every new volunteer and paid-on-call member in the first month, with the conversation about why the department asks this; refreshed annually at a drill night with the year’s incidents (de-identified) and a reminder about fatigue; the signed acknowledgement renewed annually. The Apparatus, Driving and Roadway team reviews this procedure annually and after any personal vehicle collision, with a learning-team session with volunteer members. Sign-off: the program manager; consulted: the JOHSC and the volunteer association.

• Program: Apparatus, Driving and Roadway Operations Program section 5.12.
• Policy: Policy - Apparatus and Driving; Policy - Volunteer Members section 5.7; Policy - Fatigue and Hours of Work.
• Procedures: SWP - Emergency Vehicle Response and Backing; SWP - Roadway Incident Scene Blocking.
• Forms: Form - Vehicle Collision Report; Form - Near-Miss and Good-Catch Report.

This chapter relies on the following legal requirements, which differ by province and territory. Check your jurisdiction’s section on each topic page before adopting it.