Any Emergency Ambulance Drivers/Paramedics On Here?
 

Today on my way to work if i had not had my wits about me i would have collided with an Ambulance on an Emergency call.

He was coming down the inside using the bus lane with his blue's on but no sirens, surely he would have been better to have come down the outside with his blues and twos going to alert people to get out of the way, was just wondering if this was the norm?
Cheers
Colin

Buses don't have sirens - do you nearly collide with them?

Point taken but he was going a lot quicker than a bus!!!!!

:lol:

ive had that a few times with ambulances and fire engines but noticed them quickly thank god i guess its normal

If you're not a bus driver, i suggest keeping out of the bus lanes.

Some people don't put their sirens on even though you are supposed to (not between 11.30pm and 7am), even so did you not hear of MIRROR, signal manouver? Or not driving in bus lanes?

Sometimes using sirens can slow you down.
When people hear sirens and see the emergency services approach, they have a natural tendency to pull over to the left.
Chances are that someone would have pulled over into the bus lane impeding their progress.

When mum was on the ambulance she said a couple of times, depending on the state of the patient some used to panic a bit more if the sirens were on so they switched them off and just left the blue lights to indicate to traffic they were in a hurry.

The main road by me sounds like a soundbyte of New York, these days....

I wouldn't mind but: a) its a straight clearish main road, and b) there ain't much traffic or pedestrians at 1:00am :rolleyes:

I presume its plod in their jumped up pandas as the drivers of those have less common sense than a convoy of dyspeptic Siamese cats.

Although it is a main artery route to the nearest A&E so logic would say otherwise, yet my last life/death trip in an ambulance down that very road didn't use any sirens, which confirm my suspicions (great driver though, pity it was in vain).


A road by my work the local plod do driver training...we've started doing ZZ top style gestures when they drive past with the sirens on...I swear one day they'll have a go at us :lol1: (30mph road too, so blues and two hurtling at an enourmously fast and dangerous 30mph ;) )

This makes no sense to me. :wonder: You say you would have collided with this ambulance if you hadn't had your wits about you, and yet the ambulance was in a bus lane? Does this mean you were about to use the bus lane?

Hello, dont want to debate the ins and outs of response driving as it could easily take a full day but all I will say is that one large police force in the UK now operates a policy where sirens MUST be used when ever the blue lights are used, unless there are special circumstances.

I will also add that medic response drivers will soon have to have much tougher training under new legislation...

Guys, if he was trying to pull out from a side junction, across a bus lane into the main lane, maybe that's how the accident nearly happened?

Well hopefully in that case he'd have seen the ambulance when he looked right!

He could have been going to turn left, off a main road therefore crossing over the buslane, and in free flowing traffic you wouldn;t expect a bus to be overtaking on the inside!

Exactly. Just trying to make a point to all the "Don't drive in a bus lane" comments.

You can legally drive in some bus lanes if it is outside the restricted times in which it is enforced (such as outside 7am to 7pm ) :)