Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)
  • Drivers v blues 'n' twos = PANIC
  • wrightyson
    Free Member

    Why do so many people freeze at the mere sight of a blue flashing light or sound of a siren?
    Tonight’s ridiculous example was the drive home on a country road. Road closed due to accident about 10 mins out of our way. Get back onto main road and up to a set of lights. Blues seen by myself at the back of the queue of traffic (must be from the accident I think) our lights go green, so rather than moving over and onwards the car at the front of the queue just freezes leaving us all blocking the ambulance. It must have been 30 secs before they realised the ensuing carnage behind!

    johndoh
    Free Member

    The thing I see more often aren’t the ones that freeze, it’s the ones that don’t even see them in the first place, continuing on their merry way completely oblivious to the fact there are blue lights/sirens right behind them.

    Ohh, and the clowns that try to ‘overtake’ you once the emergency vehicle has passed and you are pulling away again.

    MartynS
    Full Member

    I had the pleasure of driving out of London on Tuesday at about 6.30.
    The A40 was utterly horrid because of an incident down near White City. An ambulance was making its way through down the middle of the queue, following it was what I can only describe as a tsunami of motorbikes and scooters who clearly couldn’t belive there luck that someone was ploughing them a nice path.

    Saw a guy on a country road (unlit and at night) stop just before the crest of a rise as he had an ambulance behind him.. Ambulance couldn’t pass safely. They sat there for what seemed like an age before they realised…

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    Cougar
    Full Member

    I think it’s broadly ignorance. People don’t know what to do so they default to doing nothing, even if they were doing something beforehand like, say, driving. Blues & twos? Best slam on the anchors!

    I caught the tail end of something on TV the other day, I think some sort of awareness campaign is about to be kicked off.

    wrightyson
    Free Member

    Some kind of awareness or actual training would be great. I don’t recall anything when learning to drive but that is 20 years ago. I think I was watching some programme where I learnt to basically reduce your speed move in tight so the following emergency vehicle can move by in stages rather than keep slamming on as people just stop.

    firestarter
    Free Member

    I was driving to a house fire on tues eve in a bit of fog and i approched a mini roundabout doing about 40mph in a 40 zone i slowed right down as i approched. I could see all other 3 junctions had a car on by this stage as drivers were aware if my approach i was indicating right and about ten foot from the roundabout the guy to my left pulled out on me and then stopped in panic right in front of me. By this stage i was just about on the roundabout. Christ knows what he was thinking

    My favourite place for people to stop is right opposite each other leaving a gap just smaller than a fire engine 😉 that and on the brow of a hill. I also just love those lol

    TomB
    Full Member

    From our paramedic driver training, we look for at least 2 out of 3 signs that you have seen us: brake lights, indicator, change in road position towards the verge. Have a think, move over and adjust speed to allow vehicle to pass safely/smoothly. We are not legally exempt from rules relating to solid white lines, so can legally only pass stationary vehicle, bikes, road maintenance vehicles etc by crossing solid lines.

    Don’t go through a red light for an emergency vehicle approaching from behind, don’t slam on, don’t ease over but continue at 70 mph on single carriageway, we don’t have rocket fuel/nitro boost! Don’t drive up onto the verge at 50, you’ll wreck your car!
    Note- there are **** behind the wheel of emergency vehicles just as there are in other vehicles (although they should know better!).
    Oh, and if you are in a single lane of coned off road works, just keep driving, don’t slow to a crawl, or dive off throughout the cones into the roadworks!

    surfer
    Free Member

    Had one behind me on a local country lane. Overtaking was difficult for the ambulance (full of heavy life saving stuff) the driver behind panicked tried to mount the kerb (as it was) fluffed the whole thing and almost forced him to stop.
    I just accelerated a bit and kept ahead easy until the road widened and then slowed to allow him to shoot past.
    Cheery wave by driver! Simples!

    DezB
    Free Member

    The thing I see more often aren’t the ones that freeze, it’s the ones that don’t even see them in the first place, continuing on their merry way

    Riding home on quite narrow, but quite busy A road tonight. About a mile ahead I see the blue ambulance lights coming in the opposite direction.
    As they get closer I start to feel tense and yes, bingo, just as the ambulance is overtaking a car on the opposite side of the road, dickhead in a Mondeo overtakes me and drives straight at it! How the sodding hell he didn’t see the bright blue lights in the dark is beyond me.

    Onzadog
    Free Member

    As I always used to teach my students, carry on as normal until you know you can do something helpful, then make it clear what you’re doing.

    mrchrispy
    Full Member

    I **** hate seeing blue lights when I’m cycling in traffic, you just know some bellend is going to pull over for them and flatten you., also if it’s quiet and they are approaching at speed I try to let them know I know they are there.

    neilsonwheels
    Free Member

    This is one subject that has always made me stare in bewilderment as a driver and as an ex HGV driver I’ve seen it all. I have seen folks blocking traffic light, junctions and islands because they just stop.

    A couple of weeks ago I was cycling home and a police car was coming the other way, in front of plod was a van and in front of the van was a woman in a little shopping car. Woman sees blues and pulls over. Man in van goes ballistic at her and gets on the horn and swerves out from behind her and very nearly takes overtaking plod out who now has to swerve into me.! I shit you not. If the police weren’t in a hurry I think they would have pulled the offending van driver out and truncheoned him to a bloody pulp.

    Traveling down the M6 (pentrith) in a contraflow in the dead of night many moons ago I see the blues approaching from nowhere. As there was nowhere to pull over I gave it a boot full and wound it up to around 90. As soon as the contraflow finished I pulled over and the police shot past giving me a thumbs up and a thankyou.

    timba
    Free Member
    kayak23
    Full Member

    Apparently even if the emergency vehicle is going the other way and not even on your side of the road, you must still drop anchor and swerve into the verge…. 😕

    Sandwich
    Full Member

    Apparently even if the emergency vehicle is going the other way and not even on your side of the road, you must still drop anchor and swerve into the verge

    Not quite but the film linked by Timba contains advice to pull over if the emergency vehicle is coming the other way.

    sootyandjim
    Free Member

    I often escorts patients when transferring from our hospital to a regional neurological centre up the M1 so spend a fair bit of time in the back of ambulances, usually at night. It never ceases to amaze me that an ambulance hammering down the outside lane with blues and twos on is seemingly so difficult to see at night coming up behind drivers, what with the amount of ‘fast lane hoggers’ who won’t get out of the way (why do they always drive German cars?) or who pull out at the last moment in front of us.

    Flashing blue lights, apparently not so easy to see in the dark!

    cubist
    Free Member

    As a kid walking on the footpath I once got hit by a car pulling out of the way of an ambulance by mounting the kerb. It would have been an ironic way to go…

    klumpy
    Free Member

    I once had an emergency vehicle on blues come up behind me and I reacted perfectly. And yet I once saw someone else not do so! I mean honestly, how hard can it be to be as awesome as I was in the aforementioned anecdote!?

    DezB
    Free Member

    Don’t know klumpy, but it’d be pretty hard to come up with as shit a post as yours.

    bails
    Full Member

    pulling out of the way of an ambulance by mounting the kerb

    Doesn’t the highway code specifically say not to do this?

    I don’t have a problem with emergency vehicles when I’m on the bike. I can hear them coming loads earlier tham drivers can and I can either stop against the kerb or dismount and get on the pavement/verge so I’m completely out of the way by the time they reach me.

    I try to leave space when I’m first (in the car) at red lights so I can move over without going through the red light. I know its ‘correct’ but I wouldn’t feel great if I was sitting there for a minute or two at a red light with an ambulance stuck behind me.

    jimjam
    Free Member

    I’m not a panicky person by any stretch and I consider myself a confident driver but I’ll hold my hand up and say I don’t know what to do when I hear a siren. I think it’s natural because a lot of the time you hear a siren before you see lights, so there’s often no way of knowing what direction the police/amubulance is coming from, what lane it’ll be in, or what other drivers around you will do.

    I usually continue on as normal until I can get an idea of what’s happening, and then I’ll pull n when I can. A lot of people’s default reaction seems to be to instantly freeze as soon as they hear a siren or see lights. It’s understandable though as you have no way of knowing how the situation will unfold. No one wants to be the guy who crashes into an ambulance.

    Flaperon
    Full Member

    They also tend to approach disproportionately fast and someone unpredictably (especially police cars). For many police officers, driving with the flashing lights on is an excuse to drive like a knob.

    The closest I’ve ever come to being killed as a pedestrian was when a police car came around a roundabout the wrong way and exited up the wrong side of the road with lights on but no siren. I was crossing at the time (and who looks right when crossing the entry to a roundabout?) and I got away with it by the skin of my teeth.

    jimjam
    Free Member

    Flaperon

    The closest I’ve ever come to being killed as a pedestrian was when a police car came around a roundabout the wrong way and exited up the wrong side of the road with lights on but no siren.

    When I was a student a PSNI Landrover killed a pedestrian outside our building. No siren, no lights. I remember seeing them go past before the accident, doing maybe twice the speed limit. So yeah, they can drive like knobs some times. With or without lights.

    neilwheel
    Free Member

    Apparently even if the emergency vehicle is going the other way and not even on your side of the road, you must still drop anchor and swerve into the verge….

    The commentary specifically says not to do this, maybe it needs a big green tick or a big red cross on the screen?

    It’s really not rocket science, the drivers who don’t know what to do in this situation should be forwarded for a driver awareness course.

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    It’s really not rocket science, the drivers who don’t know what to do in this situation should be forwarded for a driver awareness course.

    dunno what’s on the driving test these days, but there was nothing specific when I had lessons, other than commonsense and checking before entering junctions (not just for emergency vehicles, but anything) rather than ploughing on through because you have the green light. etc.

    i also tend to leave space when in a queue, partly for exactly the same reason as mentioned above. gives space to pull to one side. and in Austria now it is law on dual carriageway/autobahns to pull over to make a lane down the centre for emergency vehicles (not the hard shoulder), rather than the UK carnage of some wanting to pull one way, some pulling over another,thereby creating more blockage than there already was. other countries are following that Austrian idea, even just as a common sense thing, and not legal obligation.

    stumpy01
    Full Member

    Part of the problem is that people don’t use their mirrors, I think.
    And then they panic, which I can sometimes understand if you don’t drive often or aren’t a confident driver.
    I know some people who will only drive if they are going on their ‘normal routes’ and don’t feel confident detouring from these, so for those people I can understand how a sudden decision must be difficult – not that I think that’s particularly good or acceptable.

    Just remember that you should still follow the rules of the road – so jumping a red light with a camera on to make way for an emeergency vehicle will see you stuffed, as will things like getting caught in yellow hatchings if you move to get out the way of an emergency vehicle.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    stumpy01 – Member

    Part of the problem is that people don’t use their mirrors, I think.

    You don’t even need to really use your mirrors though, flashing blues in your mirrors should catch your attention even when you’re not looking at that, if your eyes are plugged in

Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)

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