Have you ever been in your car driving down the road to a place you're very used to driving to

driving to? Maybe to or from work or going to a relative's house. While you're going, you're paying

attention to the road, but you're still thinking about other things.

Maybe the side of the road and all the things on it aren't fully in your vision because momentarily, you lose yourself in that thought.

Before you know it, the car in front of you has their brake lights on and you're rapidly approaching them.

You slam on your brakes too, but you're not sure if you're going to hit the car or not.

Same sort of scenario, but a bit different.

You're driving down the road, and a pedestrian tries to cross the street in front of you.

They didn't do the normal look both ways before crossing,

and even while being

fully alert and seeing this person walking into the street, you have to make the split-second

decision to either try and stop or swerve around them, all while keeping in mind that if you

stop, you still may hit them, and if you swerve, you may hit something else. These are examples of a different nature, but still in the same regard to quick decisions

that people in a lot of industries may be faced with.

That includes emergency services, especially emergency services.

High pressure situations that demand swift and decisive action can have life-altering

consequences. The rapid pace of the events give little time for deliberation. Actions sometimes

have to be taken that can prove to either save or take a life. And that decision could prove

harmful to the responder as well, directly when the scene is playing out,

or after being scrutinized weeks or months after it happened.

In this episode, I'll be talking about a situation that played out just like this,

one where a split-second decision was made.

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