So I’m in my car, and I hear coming up behind me the siren of either a police car or emergency vehicle. If I can, I pull over to the right and stop.
How about if traffic is too dense for that? (which it usually is in Southern California) Am I supposed to just stop where I am (and run the risk of being rear-ended / otherwise overrun by the traffic around me), or fight my way over to the right (by which time the emergency vehicle will probably be long gone anyway)? How about if traffic just keeps moving (which I have often seen it do, even when a police car is approaching with lights + siren)?
This happened to me: I was in the leftmost of 3 lanes, waiting to take a left turn, at an intersection. There were no cars behind me, but the other 2 lanes were full. An Ambulance came up behind me, and I didn’t know what to do. Since traffic was completely stopped, and I didn’t want to block them, I went ahead and made my left turn. I was surprised when the ambulance also took a left, and followed me, since I assumed it would just go straight ahead through the red light. I pulled over and let it pass. I was relieved there were no police around, because I had no idea what the correct procedure was.
The local emergency services in my jurisdiction are very adamant about one thing: please try your best to get your sorry arse out of the way of an emergency vehicle under siren, but DON’T DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL in order to do it. They don’t want well-intentioned drivers running red lights, mounting footpaths etc in order to get out of the way. If you can’t move, you can’t move, and the emergency vehicle will find a path around you, even if it means going onto the wrong side of the road to do it. They are highly trained drivers, and when they have to do fancy stuff, they like to know that the people in their cars aren’t going to do anything unexpected.
Except for the “sorry arse” comment I think TheLoadedDog nailed it. I seriously doubt that many people deliberately try to get in the way of an emergency vehicle. I think that most either don’t hear the siren, can’t figure out where it’s coming from, or are confused by the situation. Most of the laws, and public service ads, stress pulling to the right. Many of these laws were written years ago, before freeways, before A/C became the norm in cars, before surround sound stereo systems.
If you’re on a crowded freeway, pulling to the right, onto the breakdown lane, may be exactly th wrong thing to do, as that may be the only clear avenue for an emergency vehicle. You shouldn’t normally break traffic laws to get out of the way, but if you’re in the middle of an intersection, waiting to make a left turn, it may be the right thing to do in order to clear the intersection. While pulling to the right and stopping should be your first thought, you really have to size up the situation very quickly and act in your best judgement considering the circumstances, even if it just means staying where you are.
I have some reservations about the “always pull to the right” that the laws proclaim. Quite often, I can travel down the right side of a multilane road, particularly at a few of our major intersections, without having a single car move out of my way. At the largest intersection in my town, there is even a large (x1.5 lane widths) breakdown lane on the right side, perfect for bringing an emergency vehicle through. I can’t even begin to count the number of times well intentioned drivers have cut me off (and of course a 66,000lb ladder truck stops on a dime) when automatically pulling to the right.
When you hear the siren, try your best to get out of the way, pulling either left or right, making a path that the emergency vehicle can get through. Essentially, gauge your reaction with what the other drivers are doing. The driver’s seat of a fire engine is high enough that we can see over all but the biggest vehicles, and we can figure out how to wind through traffic (if at all). Worse comes to worst, we’ll proceed with traffic (which is sometimes the fastest way to go).
Above all else, though, don’t do anything illegal. You cannot drive through a red traffic signal, unless a police officer tells you to. Period. Fire engines are not police officers. EMTs are not police officers. Even police officers won’t “tell” you to go through the light by using their siren. I hate running red lights in a fire engine, and get very nervous when I do have to go through one, even if I can see that all of the oncoming lanes of traffic have come to a stop, and they recognize that I’m coming through.
The one, steadfast rule I teach all of my new drivers - lights and sirens make people do stupid things. As an emergency vehicle driver, think of what you would least want that other driver to do, and 90% of the time, thats what their going to do. I’ve apparently come up with rather colorful language in the cab of a fire engine in reaction to other people’s driving skills, and I"m not the cussing type.
KCB and The Loaded Dog are both right. If you’re stuck in traffic and can’t go anywhere, stay put. We’ll figure out how to get around you. Also, take your cues from the other drivers around you. Everybody else pulling to the left? Go ahead and do that, too. Sometimes the best way for us to get through is to part the red sea and drive right down the middle, so people pull to the left and right.
And for god’s sake DON’T RUN THE RED LIGHT!!! We’re only allowed to proceed through after stopping and make sure it’s clear. You are not allowed to go through until it turns green. If we can’t get through the light, we’ll wait, and so should you. I’ll shut down the siren and all the lights and wait for the Opticom to do its thing.
I ran the red light. It was just me turning left, and no other way for them to go. I couldn’t see myself sitting still at this big intersection with a whole bunch of people sitting there watching me block the fire engine. I looked around and then made a tight little u-turn. I’d do it again. Everybody else had stopped. I cranked the wheel and floored it. Nobody could have made it through to hit me quick enough.
The other time it was a cop. He was coming up to the right, but his clear path was ending, and I had a clear path ahead of me, so I just braked to let him make the lane change more easily. Traffic was too heavy to just stop.
It’s great to have a couple of emergency vehicle drivers chiming in.
So, to summarize - use common sense, don’t mindlessly force your way to the right (even if the law says to), but instead try to figure out the best way, given traffic conditions, to make a clear passage for the emergency vehicle.
Another one - someone may have told me this was on a driving license test! (but maybe not)
You’re stopped at a red light, and a fire truck comes up behind you, sirens sounding and lights flashing. What do you do?
I believe the answer was you run the light, after making sure it’s safe to do so (or at least as safe as that can ever be), then pull over and stop on the right. This contradicts what the drivers were saying above that you still don’t get to break the law, even when clearing the way for an emergency vehicle.
Yesterday I was at a traffic light in a left-hand turn lane behind several other cars when an ambulance came up behind me. The ambulance wanted to go left. In the straight-and-right-hand turn lane there was only one old lady, who was waiting to go straight across the intersection. I and those in front of me really had nowhere to go, so the ambulance went into the right lane behind the old lady.
The poor lady, instead of just making a legal right-hand turn on red to get out of the way, kept trying to inch her car forward so the ambulance could go around her. Didn’t work, she couldn’t get her car far enough forward. The left-arrow finally turned green and a car or two turned left and immediately pulled over, then the ambulance made the left turn and passed them.
Not around here. If you have nowhere to go, sit still. Most emergency vehicles if confronting a blocked intersection where they cannot run up the opposite side of the street will shut down the lights and sirens and let the lights cycle, once things start to break up, the light up and proceed. The worst thing you ever want to do is something quick and difficult to predict. As KCB mentioned emergency vehicles are big and heavy, even standard ambulances are usually converted cargo vans that can weigh in the 7000-8000 pound range and will crush most production cars like a toy.
The little left turn U turn scenario above under some circumstances could have got you t-boned by the ambulance coming up the opposite side of the street. Something else to consider is that its not uncommon for there to be more than one emergency vehicle passing through the area. Running the red to give the EMS vehicle behind you a path could get you clobbered by another EMS vehicle coming up the cross street that has a green light and will not be stopping.
Drach ex-EMT, who saw 3 too many ambulance accidents.
One of the holiest directives in the world of emergency services is “Be part of the solution, not part of the problem”. If it takes 90 seconds longer to get to the scene of an emergency to do so safely, you do it, because the next closest help is probably twice as far away as you are, and now if the ambulance gets in an accident, additional resources are tied up dealing with that accident, meaning anyone else has to wait even longer.
Not to mention the nightmare of reports if you so much as scuff the paint on another vehicle on the street.
Yeilding to them and doing something erratic or illegal because you think they want you to are two completely different things. Trust me, if you run a light to get out of their way, all the ambulance and fire crews are going to think is “DUMBASS!”
Don’t count on it, car accidents and violent crimes, probably, but thats only a portion of the total call volume.