MAST to make sure motorists won’t miss its ambulances

By SARA SHEPHERD - The Kansas City Star

Worthy of the best-dressed list they’re not.

The back ends of all MAST ambulances soon will be plastered with highly reflective royal blue and canary yellow chevrons. Think mod ski sweater meets oversized road sign.

Obnoxious? Maybe. But officials say sticking out — even if it is like a sore thumb — is the point.

The Metropolitan Ambulance Services Trust’s first striped ambulance is expected to hit the streets Monday, and motorists should see more each week until the entire fleet is replaced in a few months.

Capt. Mike D’Agostino, a MAST operation supervisor, first pitched the new markings to managers this way:

“I’ll be the first to admit that this is ugly, but keep in mind that that is what we want to achieve — we want to gain … attention.”

MAST is among the first ambulance providers in the area to follow a trend that began in Europe, where crayon-colored geometric patterns now cover the majority of emergency vehicles.

The shimmering chevrons are designed to make ambulances more visible. Specifically, they aim to help prevent crashes, which studies indicate account for more than half the on-the-job deaths of ambulance workers.

The stripes help emergency vehicles stand out, said Rusty James, incident management coordinator for Kansas City SCOUT, the bistate traffic management system.

“You would think with all the lights they have on those things that visibility wouldn’t be an issue, but it continues to be,” he said.

No MAST workers have been injured seriously in collisions in recent years, said Jason White, MAST governmental relations director. But several firefighters were hurt in 2007 when a driver plowed into their vehicles on Interstate 435 near Truman Road.

The ambulance employees on the scene dived out of the way just in time.

There have been many more “near misses,” D’Agostino said, compelling emergency responders to watch their backs on the road even while tending to patients.

“It’s scary, bottom line,” he said. “That’s the bullet that I can’t stop, that car coming down the road.”

The technical term for the concept behind the stripes is conspicuity.

First, D’Agostino said, a conspicuous object must trigger the senses to stand out from its surroundings from a distance. Next, drivers must process cognitively what to do about the object they see.

Studies have shown that chevrons such as those used by MAST — they meet in the middle, forming a peak rather than a ‘V’ — subliminally trigger drivers to steer away from them, D’Agostino said.

Emergency vehicles in the United Kingdom take the idea even further. Many sport chevrons on the back, plus oversized checkerboard patterns covering both sides.

D’Agostino said that all-over markings probably wouldn’t hurt, but that MAST is trying to balance cost with effectiveness. Because other vehicles are most likely to approach parked emergency vehicles from behind, officials targeted the ambulances’ back ends.

MAST began replacing its 56-ambulance fleet in 2006. The $6.5 million endeavor is being funded by a quarter-cent public safety sales tax approved in 2002. The stripes cost about $700 per ambulance.

Almost half of the new units are already on the streets, with the rest to trickle in by the end of April, said Jason White, governmental relations director.

New arrivals should come with chevrons intact, White said. The other ambulances will return to the Columbia dealership they came from to have the stripe decals affixed.

Several Kansas City area entities have added chevrons to the backs of fire trucks, but only a few have similar markings on their ambulances.

Belton ambulances have red and yellow chevrons covering the lower half of the vehicles’ back ends. Liberty ambulances have had red and white chevrons on the back for about a year, said Fire Chief Gary Birch.

Paul Lininger, emergency medical services chief for the Central Jackson County Fire Protection District, said the district is considering chevrons on the next ambulance it orders.

For decades, the federal government mandated that all ambulances be white with a solid orange, single stripe. But that is no longer a requirement, and the agency that licenses Missouri ambulance providers has no restrictions on color schemes, said Greg Natsch, chief with the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

As long as the vehicles are clearly recognizable as ambulances, providers can paint them however they want, Natsch said.

Natsch said he had seen more of the colorful European-inspired markings recently.

“Fire trucks have been hit by cars, ambulances have been hit by cars, firefighters and EMTs have been hit by cars,” he said. “Anything that can improve the visibility is always a positive.”