Yesterday I saw something that really made my blood boil. The family and I where driving to KFC after picking up my wife from work. We came across a motor vehicle accident. There were multiple squad cars and an ambulance on the scene. As we were approaching, it appeared that they where almost done cleaning up. A Flatbed tow truck pulled away carrying a Dodge truck with severe front-end damage. At that point, I noticed that the front end of the ambulance was also severely damaged. It pissed me off to no end to see that. Why? What if that had been your Husband, Wife, Son, Daughter, Mother, Father, etc in the back of the ambulance?

People, driving is not a constitutional right, driving is not something you can do half-assed, driving is not a game. Daily I see idiots that make “brilliant driving maneuvers” such as making a left turn from the right lane, weaving in and out of traffic doing 15+ over the speed limit, cutting people off, and just plain not paying attention to their surroundings. That type of driving behavior is what leads to most accidents. These are also the same people that when an accident occurs are the first to yell, “It’s not my fault!” Do you want to know something? It is your fault. The majority of it is your fault. Sure, the other driver should be paying attention and have escape routes just in case of idiots like you. However, if you weren’t driving like you have cranial-rectum disease it would have happened either.

What makes this worse then a regular accident is that it involved an ambulance. You know the big boxy things that drive down the road usually painted in easy to see colors and with lights for even greater visibility. Just in case you are blind they have this loud handy device called a siren, but you might not hear that due to the excessively loud music youÂ’re blaring out of your speakers. Some people may be willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say that either the ambulance was empty, not running lights and sirens, or caused the accident. I tried to find the local news source for this story online, unfortunately I couldnÂ’t find one, so IÂ’ll paraphrase from the local rag, er newspaper that has the story. The ambulance was rushing a patient to a local hospital when the driver of the truck ran a red light and struck the ambulance. The driver of the truck was ticketed for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle and a red light violation. The patient in the back of the ambulance had to be picked p by a second ambulance.

I worked in law enforcement for many years. After working in that field IÂ’ve come to the conclusion that lights and sirens on emergency vehicles are a waste. Many people just do not pull over for emergency vehicles. It doesnÂ’t matter if it is a fire truck, police car or ambulance, they just donÂ’t care! People are more worried about getting to their destination faster, then the rules of the road. On numerous occasions, IÂ’ve actually witnessed drivers using emergency vehicles to help themselves get through traffic. When others pull over, the asshole drivers speed around them. Then there are the ones that just blatantly ignore the emergency vehicles. Every one else has pulled right, they however have to make a left turn half a mile up and continue on their merry way to their turn. Then because of traffic in the oncoming lane, they canÂ’t move and end up blocking the road, slowing down the emergency vehicle.

Personally, I would love to see them install cameras on all Fire Trucks, Ambulances and Police Cars just to track the vehicles around them when they are running lights and sirens. If someone is driving like an idiot, the owner of the vehicle gets a $200.00 to $5,000.00 fine (Depending on the nature of the response and number of offenses). Make it so these tickets canÂ’t be removed from your record by going to traffic court. Maybe IÂ’m being too harsh, but all I can think of is if it was my loved one that needed help and that help arrived just seconds too late because of idiots not getting out of the way.

What do you think? Do you have this problem where you live, or is this unique to Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin?

Posted by: Contagion at 04:21 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 749 words, total size 4 kb.