I’m a paramedic – why do we have THREE different ambulance sirens
HAVE you ever heard an ambulance siren and wondered why it sounds different than the siren you heard the day before?
A paramedic spoke candidly about the different types of sirens on emergency vehicles, indicating that there are basically three different options for different situations.
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In an insider chat with LADbible, the paramedic explained that there’s the normal neenaw, the faster neenaw, the neenaw, and then the tritone siren.
The reason they alternate these three is to make sure people don’t drop out.
“It is known that if you sound one siren repeatedly, people don’t hear it,” she explains.
“They then switch to the sound, because you get so used to the sound. That’s why we alternate the three sirens.”
There’s also a “megaphone” – which, as the name suggests, makes a “loud honking sound” – located just to the side of the steering wheel.
“We use that in certain situations, like in heavy traffic or when there’s danger, and we need to alert people if there’s something serious,” she said.
And when asked what her favorite siren was, she replied, “Megaphone, I love it!”
“I never knew that! Paramedic reveals insider secrets…” LADbible captioned the video as they shared it on TikTok.
In the comments, many people admitted that they had no idea that there were different types of ambulance sirens.
“I didn’t even know there were more,” one person wrote.
“Wait a minute, people, can you turn off the siren?” asked another in surprise.
“I’ve never noticed that before,” said a third.
“No siren has any real meaning,” wrote someone else.
“They alternate them so you pay attention, unless it’s the megaphone.
“Then get out of the way!”
“The three sirens also have slightly different ranges and directions,” another noted.
“If you cycle through it, you can warn people of an ambulance before they see one themselves, for example at an intersection or roundabout.”
As someone else said, “The long tone travels further and is therefore used when you are going faster.
“Two-tone sound is when traffic passes closer together and the third siren is a spread out sound at intersections.”
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