Selfishness versus a Selfless Act of Heroism

On my way into the city yesterday, my route was suddenly filled with numerous emergency vehicles making their way towards a column of dark black smoke. I had just turned down a smaller street, hoping to avoid the normal heavy traffic on the larger roads, when I saw the smoke a few blocks ahead, obviously from something that had just begun to burn.

"Not again," was my first thought. Two weeks ago, as I left the CSA, I sat at a traffic light waiting for it to change when a similar black-smoked fire began just a few hundred yards up the road. Thankfully then I was turning so I did not see what was on fire.

Yesterday, I quickly assessed where and when I could get off the road I was on to be out of the way of the disaster response. Emergency vehicles - police cars, fire trucks, a fire inspector, ambulance, and even a police van - rushed to the scene from every direction. Their impact on traffic did not bother me; they are there to help when there are emergencies. What really irritated me were the drivers who would not move out of the way.

When there is an emergency vehicle approaching, traffic is required to pull off to the right side of the road if possible to leave the lanes clear for the emergency personnel to move quickly and safely through the streets. On a divided road, traffic in the opposite lane does not have to pull over, but the roads I was on were not divided. Over the course of the next ten minutes, as I wove my way away from the area, emergency vehicles poured towards the scene from every direction, and numerous cars totally ignored them.

People, an emergency is not a traffic opportunity for you. When the responsible drivers pull off to the side of the road to clear the way, this is not a signal for you to pass everyone and speed on your way. If you did bother to pull over, it is dangerous (and rude) to pull out from the curb super-fast just so you can get ahead of a few cars. Are you trying to cause another accident and create more problems for the emergency crews? And please, when the firetruck and police car cause the light to stay green and they zoom through the intersection in the turn lane, do not think for one minute that it is appropriate for you to pull out behind them and gun it trying to make it through the light, too.

People who hinder the prompt arrival of emergency crews are not only rude, they are endangering the lives of those people that need treatment by the crews. They are increasing the risk of a fire getting further out of control and threatening more lives. They are risking causing traffic accidents that will pull emergency crews from the crisis they were responding to.

For once, folks, do try to think of others first. There may come a time in your life when you need emergency crews to reach you as fast as possible, and then you're really going to hope that all the drivers get the heck out of their way.

As far as I know, traffic delays did not contribute to the deaths of the three people yesterday when a medical helicopter crashed in the neighborhood I was driving through. As a stark contrast to the rude drivers I observed, though, witnesses say the helicopter pilot steered his malfunctioning craft away from the houses seconds before his death as the helicopter plunged nose-first into the ground and burst into flame. His final action ensured no-one on the ground was injured or killed.