An article in Fire Chief by retired Battalion Chief of the Chesterfield (VA) Fire and EMS Department and current president of Prevention Connection International argues that American fire trucks and other apparatus are too large, too expensive, and less than optimal for current roadway conditions and for the goal of life preservation.
The author contends that traffic congestion and the layout of winding, disconnected streets in urban and suburban areas create problems for "super-sized" fire apparatus. These thoughts led him to ask: "How wide streets in our cities should be?" and "Do we need big and expensive trucks on the road for mostly medical calls and car crashes?" The author points out that fire apparatus used in Western Europe are highly maneuverable on narrow, winding streets, and have a much smaller footprint than American rigs, and that fire departments in Europe and Asia are successfully using smaller rapid response vehicles as primary tools in their urban firefighting deployment strategies.