Just thinking out loud - January 12, 2014
Lets see if I can paint the big picture
1. The population of the USA is getting older, more obese, more diverse, and better educated.
2. Death can occur in 1 second - explosion, gun shot, extreme trauma, major electrocution - etc
3. Many deaths take a little while to occur - poisoning - heart attack - stroke - bleeding - drowning - etc.
4. 1.4 million worldwide die in motor vehicle accidents annually. The leading cause of "years of life lost" in the USA is motor vehicle accidents. Most seem to happen late at night, and involve teens or alcohol or drugs.
5. Police, fire, and ambulance are rarely nearby when an incident happens. (60 or 120 seconds away)
6. Prevention efforts can have great results. MADD, air bags, smoke detectors, health awareness, etc.
7. Putting this all together - for the future of public safety agencies in the USA - I see lots of small vans driving around - providing prevention services - and providing emergency response services - staffed by multi role providers. Maybe armed police and structural firefighters will be considered as specialists.
There is also a tremendous need for technically trained specialists. Radio engineers, computer engineers, structural engineers, behavioral experts, etc are extremely rare in the public safety agencies.
Note - Dispatch of structural firefighters in the USA is very slow because they are allowed to sleep in beds in the fire stations. It usually takes close to 3 minutes for structural firefighters to be dispatched and to get onto their fire engines at night in the USA.