Roadside Emergency Kit: Medical Equipment for a Vehicle
Rob PincusDescription
Rob is at the PDN Training Tour Truck to discuss keeping emergency medical equipment in a vehicle. We may want to render aid after a traffic accident, defensive situation, or other incident where people need help. The roadside emergency kit should be staged so it can be quickly and easily accessed. Rob’s roadside emergency kit includes a range kit with basics for treating gunshot wounds, but the larger vehicle kit contains devices that can be used to treat crushing injuries.
Having emergency equipment at the ready isn't always easy or practical. If I'm moving about my daily life dressed like this, not carrying a bag of any kind, it's kinda hard to keep emergency medical equipment around. But anytime I'm near my vehicle, there's really no excuse for me not to have the things that I might need in a worst-case scenario. Obviously, we could simply be talking about a traffic accident, we could be talking about some kind of defensive situation where I've used a firearm that I'm carrying or that I keep in my vehicle to defend myself. Or we could just come up on some situation where people need help and we need to be prepared to render that aid if we feel it's appropriate.
So inside of the tour truck here, I keep a lot of equipment staged on the back door here. A lot of it's for the range specific, whether it's sun tan lotion, of course I've got my emergency trauma kit that I keep with me out here on the range at all times. But it is actually attached to a larger emergency response kit that I can pull very quickly and very easily out of the truck if I come up on an accident or if I'm in an accident, if I'm injured, somebody else in the truck is injured. If I can get to this bag, it has the primary things that I need. I simply release those two straps, give a good tug, and this piece comes completely off.
Now, I've got my normal range kit here and my range kit has one tourniquet, compression bandage, and hemostatic agent. If you watch a lot of the Personal Defense Network videos you've probably seen what's inside of our standard range kits before. So let's take a look at what's actually inside of this bag. It's a little bit different. Here I've got some gloves.
I've got some black gloves here and blue gloves there. If I'm gonna be rendering aid to somebody else, I come up on that traffic accident, it's not the immediate trauma that we might see on the range, I might wanna go ahead and glove up. Somebody else using this kit on me might wanna go ahead and glove up. I've got some cutters here that can allow me to get into someone's clothing. If I come up with this, if I come up on some kind of a wound and I can't quite see it.
I don't know where to put the tourniquet. I can very quickly and easily put this into any tear or any rip in the pants, and rip the pants open, rip a shirt open, rip a jacket open that's buttoned up, sealed, whatever it is. This'll help me get down to the wound so I can actually see what I'm doing to stop that bleeding, or to properly apply a tourniquet. Inside, I've got a lot of different things. Now some of these things are exactly the same as you would see on the range kit.
We've got the same exact kind of compression bandage that I like to use. But we've also got some compressed gauze. You've got several little packets of compressed gauze to deal with more bleeding. The kind of bleeding that we might see with a crushing injury or the kind of injuries that come from traffic accidents as opposed to gunshot wounds. So we've got a lot of that.
I've also got some airway devices. I've got an airway device here, now, if you're not trained to use these, these aren't gonna do you any good. But if you are trained to use these, these can help you establish an airway once you get the bleeding under control if you have someone that's having trouble getting air in because of injuries up here in this area, this can help you very much. I've also got a mouth barrier. If I'm going to give CPR, I'm gonna give breaths, I wanna make sure that I have some kind of mouth barrier when I'm coming up to a traffic accident or whatever else it is that I wanna render aid during.
I've got my hemostatic agent up here. I've got that, I've got some more gloves. I've got a little light. If I come up on something at night. I've got a number four gauge needle, if I wanna relieve air pressure that's building up inside of the chest because of an injury to the lungs, I have air building up inside of the chest and it's actually compressing the lung and keeping somebody from being able to breathe.
If this is something that you know how to use, again, this is a piece of medical equipment that you wanna have. I have another tourniquet, of course, if I get these two bags separated. Maybe I just wanna tear this bag off, give it to somebody else, let them go use it to render aid, when I have my bag, I open my bag, of course, I do have another tourniquet in here. So there's a lot of different things I have in here that can help me with more advanced medical procedures than I'm going to need if I'm just out on the range trying to stabilize somebody before the good guys show up with more advanced medical help or I transport somebody to the hospital. Having medical equipment when you're just moving around your everyday life isn't always convenient.
You can't have all this stuff just tucked into a cargo pocket. But you can keep it staged in your vehicle. It should be someplace it's really obvious and someplace it's very easy to access. If you have a kit set up like this or you just keep it Velcro-ed onto the back of one of your seats, any of these things will be great options for you when it comes to staging emergency medical gear.
Good info. Who makes the emergency medical equipment bags in the video? I am specifically interested in the large orange one mounted in the tour vehicle.
Great video but here is a tip that has been tried and true for me on Gun Shot wounds. Sounds odd but a handful of Tampons (Plastic Sleeved) packs great in any kit. Not only great for plugging a bullet hole but the sleeve can be used as an emergency airway (cricothyrotomy) if you are really in deep.
is this a training video? I would like to train for this.
Pretty good! I'm a retired paramedic with an RN license. I have two medic bags, which I carry. One is an M-3 configuration. The other is an M-5. The former is more simple, more direct. The latter is more all encompassing. Each has tourniquets, hemostatic agents and Israeli bandages. An item I might suggest, in addition to OPAs and NPAs, carry a collapsible Ambu Bag. It sure beats mouth to mouth, even with a barrier. Also, a signal mirror, and a strobe and flares for those special times in remote areas at night. If they can't see you, they can't rescue.
Good stuff, and remember, even if you are not trained to use this stuff, there's always a Dr. or nurse that might arrive at the scene of an accident and be able to help if you have the equipment. And it might even be used on you.
Dear Mr. Pincus: Excellent video. I am working with my professor Dr. Brian Manhire, professor emeritus of electrical engineering, Ohio University, on a new tool for law enforcement and first responders and would like to connect with you. According to the NHTSA roughly 33% of fatal traffic accidents are caused by drugged driving. By utilizing a mobile spectrometer retrofitted for the purposes of an upper respiratory drug examination, a first-line field drug examination can be accomplished. It is not as comprehensive as other saliva-based instantaneous drug examination solutions, but we believe it will fulfill a niche application for DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs & Border Patrol field operations and first responders. We have had some interest from Israel Institute of Technology and the collaboration between Magnum Research Inc. and Israel Military Industries on the Desert Eagle .50 calibre and Jericho 491 pistols was an inspiration to us. As you may know, it was Smith & Wesson who commercialized the first roadside mobile alcohol breath analyzer. Perhaps they or another manufacturer would be interested in carrying on that legacy. Thank you for any interest in our effort. Best regards, -Nick Wing
I am interested in who makes the bags in the video. They are what I am looking for my JEEP tailgate.
Rob- I like your idea of staging med kit in car. I have a question concerning supplies. Where I live it gets below zero at night and even in the daytime. I worried that my med supplies will freeze. Besides bringing the kit indoors at night, do you have any suggestions for my concern? Thanks.