[UK] Ambulance responds through a very busy London at night - [20:01]

[Street Guardian USA]

 

[Slicer]

Sensible use of the Blues and two's

 

[Ipol]

@ Slicer agreed I dont think he is new to the job he read the road and conditions very well...........Ipol

 

[I Killed It With Fire]

I'm amazed at how cooperative and "civilized" the London drivers are... here in Montreal people care little about emergency vehicles and don't get out of our way, cut us off, and generally ignore us. It can be infuriating at times.

 

[Slicer]

I'm amazed at how cooperative and "civilized" the London drivers are... here in Montreal people care little about emergency vehicles and don't get out of our way, cut us off, and generally ignore us. It can be infuriating at times.

Most if not all of the time drivers do move over the only time I have seen an issue is with European truck drivers who don't yield, perhaps as they are sitting on the 'wrong side' they don't see what is really going on behind them.

I guess the attitude is it could be them who has the emergency or at least someone near and dear to them. The Fire Engine drivers on 'a shout' could if no one will move over and if they decide 'smash' a few mirrors off as they go about there business...

 

[I Killed It With Fire]

The Fire Engine drivers on 'a shout' could if no one will move over and if they decide 'smash' a few mirrors off as they go about there business...

We do have that authority, but in almost never use it. I've only once in 20+ years of driving fire trucks pushed a car (it was parked on the wrong side of a narrow street and I was responding to a Priority-1 medical run so the only way to get thru was to "nugde" it out of the way).

I trust you've seen the viral video of my collegues who pushed a poorly positioned police car out of the way as he was trying to get to the buildings standpipe Siamese connectors at a confirmed fire downtown Montreal?

 

[Gibson99]

Houstonians are hit & miss (sometimes literally) about getting out of the way of emergency vehicles. when I was in high school i remember someone pulled the fire alarm as a prank (and was later suspended)... as the fire truck was responding to what they thought was a genuine emergency, someone didn't yield to them and the fire truck t-boned them. killed the driver of the car and i think one of the firefighters had a broken arm as well. all because of some dumbass kid's prank.

 

[Gibson99]

We do have that authority, but in almost never use it. I've only once in 20+ years of driving fire trucks pushed a car (it was parked on the wrong side of a narrow street and I was responding to a Priority-1 medical run so the only way to get thru was to "nugde" it out of the way).

I trust you've seen the viral video of my collegues who pushed a poorly positioned police car out of the way as he was trying to get to the buildings standpipe Siamese connectors at a confirmed fire downtown Montreal?

haven't seen that one before... what are all the On n'a rien vole` stickers on the side of the engine? my french isn't good enough to figure it out.

did the PD or FD have to pay for the damage to the BMW, since it was caused by lousy parking by the PD?

 

[I Killed It With Fire]

haven't seen that one before... what are all the On n'a rien vole` stickers on the side of the engine? my french isn't good enough to figure it out.
did the PD or FD have to pay for the damage to the BMW, since it was caused by lousy parking by the PD?

The provincial government has passed a special law that retroactively steals money out of the police/fire/city workers pension funds and illegally contravenes collective agreements. We are really not happy about that. Police and fire do not have the right to strike (or to do anything that could compromise our service to the population), so the only way we can protest is to not wear our uniforms (police and fire are wearing camo army-trousers instead of uniform issued), not wash the trucks, and we put stickers on our units.

"On a rien vole - nous" means "At least we didn't steal anything" (this refers to a current inquiry into government corruption where many many politicians and high ranking officials were on "the take" from mob controlled construction companies and dirty engineering firms)

As Quebec has a "No Fault" insurance system, the BMW owner will have his damage paid for by his insurer. I am guessing that the city probably paid his insurance deductible as a measure of goodwill, but they are not obligated to do so.

 

[Nigel]

Video has improved a bit since the Liver Run

, but the speeds have dropped - no averaging 60mph across central London these days!

 

[I Killed It With Fire]

I remember that series Nigel! We also had it rebroadcast in Canada.

 

[Olli]

Quite strange that your ambulances have to drive through red lights. In my city all emergency vehicles are always given a green light when they have sirens on, please watch a video -

 

[Slicer]

That video is over 20 (perhaps even 25) years old and today in London and many of the larger cities T/Lights are controlled from an operations centre and as such the lights can be 'set' to allow emergency (Police, Ambulance, Fire Engines and Paramedic vehicles) through in the same way motorway signs can changed when accidents, etc occur. They can also 'manipulate' the lights to reduce congestion/movement of traffic - although that sometimes has the opposite effect

 

[Gibson99]

Quite strange that your ambulances have to drive through red lights. In my city all emergency vehicles are always given a green light when they have sirens on, please watch a video -

that tech doesn't exist in every city, especially the more rural areas. i've had to run red lights before to allow emergency vehicles behind me to get through.

 

[Slicer]

^ Same here it is only in the very largest conurbations that have the technology - the fire brigade did trial devices fitted in the cab to activate T/Lights but not sure where that went even if it did...

 

[I Killed It With Fire]

Quite strange that your ambulances have to drive through red lights. In my city all emergency vehicles are always given a green light when they have sirens on

I drive a fire truck in Montreal we still have to carefully proceed thru red lights. (and Montreal is not a small fire dept, we run over 200 full time units out of 69 stations).

Back in the 90's, some of our boroughs experiments with the "Opticom" system by 3M (special clear strobes on the units with a coded flash pattern changed the lights to green), but snow and other winter contaminants made it very unreliable so it was abandoned. The audio siren based systems were not even considered as we have too many different siren types and models (and each brand and model have slightly different sounds).

 

[Olli]

Thank you for your comments. I think our system works with GPS and 3G, positions of all emergency vehicles are transmitted to server which controls the lights. No audio sensors etc. Also, AFAIK, it's fully automatical, so just activating the siren activates the green lights. I think this is quite reliable and actually it's not possible to fake like being an emergency vehicle.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Here's one in HU
Jump to 3m10s

 

[Gibson99]

wow, a very nimble ambulance - driver really knows exactly how wide his vehicle is to fit through gaps without hesitation. also nice to see so many people actually getting out of the way. too many times i see an emergency vehicle coming up behind me, and others around me can't be bothered to get out of the way. i drove my miata up onto a big curb with grass to get out of the way of an ambulance behind me, but the 4x4 SUV in front of me didn't even try to get out of the way. he simply sat there and waited for the light to turn green.

 

[parklawn]

That was actually quite thrilling to watch. Excellent driving skills demonstrated by the ambulance driver.