Unbelievable, I Was crossing the A4 at West Kensington tonight, and an
ambulance starts to emerge from A Side road, blues and twos, really
slowly. While on lane of traffic stopped, the 3 cars at the front
of the other just carried on well above the speed limit! Do people have no
idea about courteous driving in the south east? Sooner they ban those kind
of drivers the better.

Paul Weaver wrote in message ...
Unbelievable, I Was crossing the A4 at West Kensington tonight, and an
ambulance starts to emerge from A Side road, blues and twos, really
slowly. While on lane of traffic stopped, the 3 cars at the front
of the other just carried on well above the speed limit! Do people have no
idea about courteous driving in the south east? Sooner they ban those kind
of drivers the better.


I saw an old person cut up a speeding amblance the other day. The
amblance had full sirens and lights going (!)

I live near a main road with fire station at one end and lots of
smaller towns and villiages on the other end so regularly
hear/see/endure fire engine going back and forward. What annoys me is
they have the loudest obxnious horn you have ever heard. Peak time god
forbid there is a fire and your stuck in traffic on the main road with
a fire engine behind you. There is nowhere for the fire engine to go
but yet it sits behind the traffic constantly honking its horn (as
well as sirens going). This causes cars at the front of traffic lights
to panic and start to edge past the lights.
So if your stuck in lights. With nowhere to go. What exactly are you
suppose to do? I know fire engines have to get to a fire within a
certian time to save lives. But if there is nowhere to go until the
lights change can't they leave off the horn for a while? (By the way
the reason they don't drive on the other side of the road is because
there is a barrier between the two sides)

(CJG Now Thankfully Living In The North)
wrote the following in:
om
There is nowhere for the
fire engine to go but yet it sits behind the traffic constantly
honking its horn (as well as sirens going). This causes cars at
the front of traffic lights to panic and start to edge past the
lights. So if your stuck in lights. With nowhere to go. What
exactly are you suppose to do? I know fire engines have to get to
a fire within a certian time to save lives. But if there is
nowhere to go until the lights change can't they leave off the
horn for a while?

Driving through red lights is what people should do if there's an
emergency services vehicle stuck behind them that has no other way of
getting through. I was at some traffic lights the other day and an
ambulance was trying to get through. There was a massive queue of
traffic and no way for it to get through on the other side of the road,
so the queue of traffic I was waiting in ended up carefully driving
through the red to let the ambulance pass.

--
message by Robin May, but you can call me Mr Smith.
Hello. I'm one of those "roaring fascists of the left wing".

Another high quality lesson from Robin May:
Your and you're are different words!

Robin May wrote:
(CJG Now Thankfully Living In The North)
wrote the following in:
om
There is nowhere for the
fire engine to go but yet it sits behind the traffic constantly
honking its horn (as well as sirens going). This causes cars at
the front of traffic lights to panic and start to edge past the
lights. So if your stuck in lights. With nowhere to go. What
exactly are you suppose to do? I know fire engines have to get to
a fire within a certian time to save lives. But if there is
nowhere to go until the lights change can't they leave off the
horn for a while?

Driving through red lights is what people should do if there's an
emergency services vehicle stuck behind them that has no other way of
getting through. I was at some traffic lights the other day and an
ambulance was trying to get through. There was a massive queue of
traffic and no way for it to get through on the other side of the
road, so the queue of traffic I was waiting in ended up carefully
driving through the red to let the ambulance pass.

I agree that that's the sensible thing to do. Anyone know if it's actually
lawful? In other words, is there a get-out clause in the law about
stopping at red lights which covers this?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

In article , Richard
J. writes
I agree that that's the sensible thing to do. Anyone know if it's actually
lawful? In other words, is there a get-out clause in the law about
stopping at red lights which covers this?

No. The relevant law is S.I.2002 No. 3113, regulation 36(1).

There is an exemption (36(1)(b)) for emergency vehicles themselves
(including an ordinary vehicle being used for those purposes), but
there's no general "to get out of their way" rule.

By the way, under regulation 40(b) an emergency vehicle can *not* "jump"
the flashing red lights of a level crossing or fire station exit etc.

--
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8371 1138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address