What the?!

[jedimaster91]

Today I finally got my car back from the shop. That's a rant in and of itself. Anywho, I had a red light and <busy street> had the green. As I was getting ready to turn onto <busy street>, I heard sirens. An ambulance was coming up from behind me. So I naturally got out of its way. The morons going the other way on <busy street> did not. The ambulance--with lights and sirens, remember--must have sat at the intersection for a good 90 seconds to 2 minutes before opposing traffic deigned to let through an EMERGENCY VEHICLE ON AN EMERGENCY RUN. I was flabbergasted. I hope whoever the EMS crew was caring for didn't suffer for the delay.

[bhskittykatt]

Grrr....I HATE HATE HATE people who do that! Seriously, someone could be dying. GTF outta the way! If you were dying, wouldn't you want people to let the EMS through?

Around here, the EMS will just push their way into intersections. They will MAKE you stop, whether you want to or not! Around here people generally get out of the way...but if traffic isn't stopping, they'll just force their way in.

[RealUnimportant]

A few years back I was riding the bus into central London with my wife when we got to a particularly busy junction. We were unable to proceed forwards, cross traffic wasn't able to get anywhere either; the fact the main junction was clear was more by luck than judgement. Aaaaanyway, we're in this big double decker bus, waiting at the front of the queue by the lights, and just as they start to change in our favour we hear sirens - there's a paramedic motorcycle coming up alongside us, wanting to cross the junction.

The bus holds fast, other traffic on our side of the junction does too, and so the bike proceeds unimpeded through our green light - and a driver on the cross street, seeing that we're not moving *yet not having legal right of way* started to cross the junction anyway & drove straight into the side of the bike, causing the rider to leave a lovely dent in the car's bonnet.

We were nearing the end of our journey anyway, so the driver of the bus let us off & we told people in the following cars that the jam was likely to be worse before it got better as someone had just run over the paramedic... He was not seriously injured, but the impact was such that the car's airbag went off, and it's not the sort of trick that gets let off lightly!