The other mistake medical pros make is that they confuse THEIR context with YOUR context.

The injuries for which a tourniquet (TQ) is the right solution will kill you in 3-10 minutes, depending on the bleed. How long does it take an ambulance to reach you? When EMS and SAR guys say "I've never needed a tourniquet", how likely is it that they had a 3-10 minute response time to the injured party?

I didn't use a TQ in my EMS time either. But that's because by the time we got on scene, the patient had bled out and was dead.

Medical pros do so much work in a rather narrow, well-defined context that they begin to think everyone else's problems will be in that context too. It's just not true.

Consider an arterial bleed in these scenarios:

- pilot crashes, gets gashed by torn sheet metal
- logger slices open his leg with a saw
- hunter gets shot by another hunter who thought he was a buck

In each case, would EMS or SAR have arrived in 3-10 minutes? No. So their TQ usage rate is zero, and they think everyone else's rate will be zero.