According to St. Urho, it’s still not legal for the driver to do. I hadn’t heard that before.
Which is why the ambulance driver should not have rolled up on you. He did not have eye contact, he broke the rules. IF you had made vehicle-vehicle contact he would have most likey been cited/held responsible.
There are millions of horror stories in the world of emergency driving and ambulance accidents are messy affairs. I had a pretty exiting 3 years at it and one of my first calls was rolling out for one of our NICU transfer units getting clobbered when he blew a red. There is little more sobering than seeing something much like this on its side in the middle of an intersection, patient died, NICU team well on the way from being tossed around the back like loose toys.
well, that’s good to know that I was not in the wrong. He stopped partway in the intersection to let me through, and I felt like everyone was watching the idiot bitch (me) who wouldn’t wait for an ambulance. If cars could slink away, I would have slunk. But he also just about gave me a heart attack when I heard the horn and saw him coming toward me!
And all the other engineers will make fun of you for the little Camry shaped scuff on your baby.
“Whats that weird area…paint looks kinda funny…oh thats where you got Camry all over you.” 
“My wife just got a Camry…try not to hit her”
"Hey I heard of you aren’t you KCB “Crash” 615 "
So many things to comment on… I was just mentally composing a Pit Thread about this very subject. I’m an EMT for a private ambo company and I’m also a volunteer EMT/firefighter.
I’ve run priority calls several times this week, and nothing pisses me off more than people who refuse to get out of the way. I went into the city this evening, and when I was a few blocks from Hopkins, I was hitting gridlock and no one would move. Luckily, I came up on a city cop at a cross street and he pulled over in front of me and cleared the way. Last night I was on a busy four-lane road, and people stayed in the left-hand lane, refusing to get over. It’s my firm belief that they were all on their cell phones with the stereo blasting and were just oblivious.
You should move to the right, not go through the intersection. If you’re close to the front of the line, you may have to pull forward a bit, and then to the right. DO NOT go through the intersection.
As for light colors, they vary by jurisdiction. Here in Baltimore, blue lights are only on cop cars. Fire and EMS vehicles have red and white, only. Volunteers are not allowed to have light bars on their personally-owned vehicles in my county.
I drive a brand-new unit, and just have one switch to hit to ‘light it up.’ That triggers the light bar on top, the flashers on the front and side, and red lights on the back. If you’re counting the large square white lights on the side and back in your tally, those are ‘scene lights’ used for extra lighting at night on-scene. They don’t come on with the emergency lights.
I’ll turn off the siren if it’s late at night and there are no other cars around, or when I go through a tunnel, because it’s so darn loud. At the first sight of other vehicles, it goes right back on. (I go through Baltimore’s Ft. McHenry tunnel to get to Shock Trauma or the VA; it goes under the harbor and is about 2 miles long)
Technically, I’m allowed to go 15 miles over the posted speed limit,* if traffic and weather permit.* When I go through red lights, I MUST stop and look in all directions before proceeding. I also hit the air horn as I approach and pass through to alert anyone who isn’t paying attention, which is in addition to the siren.
As Nytewatchyr said, it can be frustrating to be on your way to a call, and get cancelled. You’re racing down the road, and suddenly you’re not needed, so you just slow down and turn everything off. I’m sure a lot of people think we were just using the lights and siren to get through traffic, but that isn’t always the case. It happens more on fire calls - we often call dispatched for ‘fire alarm sounding’ and head out. A few minutes later, we’re cancelled, because it was a false alarm.
In my job with the private ambo company, we have fleet credit cards assigned to each vehicle for fueling up. I can go anywhere that sells diesel and accepts the card. I have to enter my driver ID and the mileage when buying fuel to track useage. I have to turn in all receipts.
As for mileage, patients are charged a flat fee plus mileage.
Back to the OP: If this was the Pit, my response would be a screaming, "If the ambulance has its <expletive> lights and siren on, you <expletive> always pull over, you <really bad expletive>!!!"
But it’s not… so I’ll just say, if the lights and siren are on, pull over to the right as soon as it’s safe. Thank you. 
This varies from state to state. For example, Colorado and Minnesota have no set speed limit, but require that we drive with due regard for the safety and well-being of others. Michigan has a hard limit of 10 mph over the posted limit.
FTR, North Carolina is also 10 MPH over. I need to find out what Virginia says, because about half of my ambulance runs go there.
I never should have gotten into this thread. I’ve now been at an intersection and encountered emergency vehicles two days in a row, and on both occasions, a civilian driver managed to screw it up somehow. This thread is bad juju.
But I will say that, particularly with the example I saw today, the ambulance driver was very careful to make eye contact with surrounding traffic and stopped when the idiot who realized, late, that there was a emergency vehicle approaching, decided to blow through the intersection more quickly rather than stopping where he was. sigh
At least no one was hurt.
You too? I got a fright as a police car behind me hit the lights…but it wasn’t for me. Nor was it for the three lanes of traffic waiting at a light which had turned green. They were all so busy looking in their mirrors, he had to put the sirens on to get them to move.
Okay, so here’s how an ambulance works. I know all this, before you ask, because I work on one. Recently, a new type of light or LED has been introduced to emergency lighting which may cause your confusion. If all of the lights seem clear, they are LEDS, and multiple colors. Now, each different light has a different function. On the sides are usually red and white lights. Mainly four on the top of each side of the box. Four of these are red lights, which may flash while driving down the road to warn cars in an intersection, or along the side. The white lights are called “scene lights” when a door is open on the ambulance, or if they were activated they are bright flood lights so EMS can see what they are doing in a dark situation. These may also turn on when the ambulance is backing up. Also on the side are amber lights that signify if the ambulance is turning, along with another small light on the top of the front fender which is to warn lower cars of the ambulance’s passing. On the back are four (two on the top, two on the bottom) brake lights. Along with two or four reversing lights, on some there are actually six, we have that. There are also two or four amber lights that flash in an emergency response in back. Flashing red and more and more blue lights are also on back, along with amber turn signals. On the front is a light bar, which may be multiple colors, headlights, turn signals, on occasion interior lights, and two or four grill lights.
At a scene, no lights may be activated, or all of them may be.
During a response, the lightbar, interior dash lights, grill lights, red lights, amber rear lights, side fender red lights, and rear amber lights are flashing.
On occasions like the situation you had, a siren may not be used because it sounded like the victim was of impaired status. The siren may be too loud, or just so random and sharp that it may frighten them.
Hope this helps
This isn’t necessarily true, if an emotionally disturbed patient was on board, or an impaired patient, the siren may not have been possible for the sake of the crew’s safety. I’ve had calls where one strange noise may have made the guy jump up and kill us all…
As for the first guy…
Be glad he Honked:p
If a police car is escorting a funeral with its lights on, and you are coming the other way, are you required to stop? If so, can you proceed once it is past?
At times especially if I am not in the curb lane and there is an open lane beside me, I stop and put my 4 ways on. I feel that indicates I am staying put and will not swerve over in front of you no matter which side of me you go by on.
As for the red traffic light thing. Should the car in the right lane make a right on red if safe to do so? Obviously if the cross traffic isn’t stopping, you don’t pull out in front of them.
Once, I was driving through some coastal Massachusetts town around 2 AM. I was stopped at a red light in a 3-way intersection on a 2-lane road, with wide shoulders. There were no other cars around, parked or moving, and the intersection was totally clear.
I see an ambulance coming in the other direction, lights flashing and siren wailing. He gets to the red light, slows down briefly, and then goes through it. I continued to wait, stopped, at the light. The ambulance had plenty of room to pass through the intersection, like any other traffic would. I was no obstructing the ambulance in any way.
Just as the light turned green, I found myself being pulled over by a very irate cop (appearing seemingly out of nowhere), who spent about 5 minutes berating me for not “moving over” for the ambulance. I explained to him that I really had no idea I was required to do so in that situation, and he spent about another 5 minutes repeating the same speech about yielding to emergency vehicles. After I pleaded ignorance yet again and explained that if I had any reason whatsoever to think that I was impeding the ambulance’s progress I would have moved, he finally let me go.
It occurred to me that he might have just been looking for an excuse to pull me over, but he seemed genuinely angry, and never once gave any sign of interest in me, the contents of my car, what I was doing there at 2 AM, etc.
Alas people have been prosecuted for this in the U.K. And it’s dangerous to boot.
Should you pull over for a Zombie?
BTW: I do not pull over for lights or sirens, I mean really why should I?
The fact that I don’t drive, much less own a car has nothing to do with this.
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I agree that whenever possible, avoiding moving into a red-light intersection is to be avoided as a method of clearing for an emergency vehicle.
Having said that, I live in New York City. There are many times during the 24 hour day when a street and side streets to turn onto are saturated. There is no shoulder, no curb lane ( most of Midtown exists during the business day with an entire row of double-parked delivery trucks down one side ). Since 1981 when I moved here, I’ve probably been pushed into the red light interesection at least a half dozen times. I can guarantee that this happens once a day in the 5 boros ( likely all in Manhattan ). You are first or second in line at a light. There is no where to go. You pull into the intersection slowly, easing to the right as you do so. This sometimes means you are easing to the right into oncoming one way traffic. There’s no choice.
I have never seen an NYPD pull over a driver forced into an intersection by a fire truck or ambulance.
When can’t you stop a car?
I can only think of three situations:
- Your brakes have failed.
- You are on railroad tracks and a train is coming.
- You are on a runway and a plane is coming.
- When slamming on your brakes is a guarantee that the 18 wheeler immediately behind you will simply plow you forward.
Cecil did a column some time back about changing the pattern of sirens so people don’t get used to them and ignore them. Maybe a similar reason for different light patterns also?
As for using lights but no siren, in my (limited) experience as pedestrian and car passenger, most emergency vehicles seem to use lights when the street is clear, and only tip the siren before an intersection, or if there is lot of traffic, but no longer use the siren continuously. I can guess that both the noise for the drivers, for the people living there, and the problem with trying to locate where the siren is coming from if it’s farther away are good reasons to use it more sparingly.
As for moving over, my (car-driving, safety-conscious, defensive-driving) mother told me that depending on how many lanes, you either move to the right to leave the left lane clear, or move to the left to leave the middle clear. And paying attention where everybody else is going - it’s pretty dumb to have one half of the road moving left, the other half moving right to create a slalom course for the ambulance.