A few years ago I was riding in the car of Sheila, whom I have mentioned a number of times on this board. We were on an arterial street; she was behind the wheel, and I heard a siren–a fire engine was approaching from behind, to our left. Sheila ignored it even though we were almost directly ahead of the vehicle. They pulled around, to the left; the captain, in the right front seat, made some kind of warning gesture to Sheila. She may have given him the finger gesture; she’s good at hiding that from me (I think I’ve already told her that the next time she pulls that I’ll put her out of the car).
The saving grace is that I haven’t seen her in three years.
Would a fire captain report such a driver to the police?
Oh, well this is good timing, I just took my test to be an ambulance driver on Saturday! Though I’m not in any way a captain at the department.
There’s nothing in our protocols saying that you have to report unruly drivers, but to be honest, in the five years I’ve been volunteering I don’t remember ever running into this problem. There have certainly been cases where the car hasn’t pulled out of the way until we get close, but I’ve never attributed it to malicious intent. Maybe they didn’t hear the siren, maybe they’re not sure how to best get out of your way. If someone gave me the finger and seemed to be deliberately staying in my way, I would be shocked, but most likely I would ignore it because if I’m urgently trying to get to the hospital or an emergency scene, I’m certainly not going to get sidetracked by some road rage.
It is alleged[sup][by whom?][/sup] that school bus drivers can and will report drivers who blow past when The Red Lights Are Flashing.
Here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, most fire calls also get one or more police car sent to that location. Often the police car(s) are close behind the fire truck, and will see any such unresponsive drivers. And it’s fairly common for them (especially the 2nd police car) to pull over such a driver, and do the full license, registration, insurance check. Then the driver will get at least a severe warning, if not the actual (expensive) “interfering with an emergency vehicle” ticket.
And other drivers who see this will give the cops a thumbs up for this.
In Calif it was on the news last month or so about wanting to make so the bus driver’s call will yield a ticket.
The short answer is no, unless there was some sort of significant delay caused by the driver or there was damage caused.
I’ve not seen deliberate impeding but I have seen instances of Type A drivers drafting an ambulance to get ahead in traffic.:mad:
True. I got a courtesy call from a TN State Trooper after a school bus driver claimed I passed him with his YELLOW lights flashing. (I was already in the left lane and in the process of passing him when he turned his yellow lights on.)
I am a fire captain, and I have reported three drivers in my career.
Two were clearly impaired, the request for the police had nothing to do with my response. I don’t know what the outcomes were for either of those drivers.
The third was an elderly driver who, after nearly three miles of driving leisurely in front of us while we made enough noise to rouse a corpse, ambled into his driveway quite nonchalantly. I spoke to a police officer at the call and passed along the address of the driver. Again, I don’t know what happened, but the officer did follow up in some respect with the driver.
I see people do foolish things in front of me on 60-odd percent of my responses. If I called the cops for all of them, they’d stop answering the radio when I called.
The fire fighter riding in the front passenger seat in a fire engine in South Korea will take a photo of your license plate if you do not get out of the way of an engine responding to a call. That photo will be sent to the traffic police who will then issue a hefty ticket to the registered driver of the vehicle.
I see a lot of people who will not even slow or move over a little bit if the emergency vehicle can squeeze through somehow.
I also see a lot of idiots lock up a whole intersection because they freeze and will not move against a red light to clear a path, even when people are trying to get them to get out of the way.
Mom & Dad both knew when to hang up the car keys and I hope I am also. I see the slide starting in some areas already.
I think a lot of people really don’t know what they are supposed to do when they are stopped at a red light and an emergency vehicle comes up behind them, red lights a-blazing, and it can’t otherwise get around. We’re all so thoroughly conditioned to never run a red light, it takes a lot of fire engine horns a-blaring to overcome that.
ETA: My anecdote:
Once, driving on a major thoroughfare, I saw a fire engine coming up behind me. I was approaching the corner of a smallish side street, with a light there that was red. So I made a right turn there and turned into the smallish side street. Well, surprise surprise, the fire engine also made a right turn into the little side street. I could have pulled over there, but it would have been a bit tight. Instead, I made another right turn into an even smaller residential side street. Well, surprise surprise, again the fire engine followed! Now it was even tighter. This street had sidewalks with tapered curbs that one could easily drive over, so now I really did pull over – halfway onto the sidewalk for the fire engine to pass.
I was driving a heavy truck in urban Birmingham, England. There was a complicated five-way junction controlled by traffic lights and I stopped at a red light going straight across. There was a car in front of me turning right (think left in the USA).
As we waited for the lights to change, a fire tender came up behind me with lights and siren going. I saw him in my mirror but I guess that the car in front of me had no idea where he was, because all the shop windows around us reflected the lights and bounced the sound around. There was nothing I could do of course but wait.
When the lights changed, the car in front pulled forward, but as he was turning right, stopped in the middle of the junction waiting for the right turn filter to let him across and there was not enough room for me to get past. A truck coming the other way saw what was happening and stopped to wave the car across, but the driver, now realising that he was the centre of attention (all the passing shoppers were watching the little scene by now) and panicked. He jumped forward a foot and stalled; then he flooded the engine trying to start it.
At that point, half a dozen burly firefighters appeared and unceremoniously pushed him across the road so that I and they could move. I was able to hug the kerb and they bulled past. I felt sorry for the car driver who unexpectedly found himself the highlight of a lot of pedestrian’s day.
In the UK it is an obligation (and common sense) to get out of the way of an emergency service vehicle. There is no law that says you have to.
When I was in high school, my bus driver wrote down license plate numbers of people who went through her bus’s red lights; I assume she later reported those to the police.
Sometimes the reason for failure to yield isn’t obvious.
In Southern California, some time back, the California Highway Patrol called a conference with Asian organizations to deal with a specific problem: Many Asian drivers, especially older ones, were not pulling over for emergency vehicles on response, apparently because they were not native to the U.S. and where they learned to drive there was no such action done to yield to a siren vehicle. The CHP wanted the Asian organizations to get the word out, in their own languages, to their communities that yielding for something approaching with red lights and siren is proper–and required by law.
What about when a fire truck isn’t on an emergency call? If you are just driving down the street and see someone committing a traffic infraction, do you call it in to the cops?
(What I’m asking is, if I see a fire truck - not on an emergency call - and I’m speeding, do I need to slow down?)
What about ambulance drivers?
Is this some kind of strange euphemism?
It was a Ford Sovereign.
No, she drove some kind of Jeep.
You threatened to put her out of her own car? You threatened to put her out of your car if she gives the finger to fireman? Or what exactly?