I get choked up seeing cars move for an ambulance, anybody else?!

[Sprinklesandsprinkles]

Every time this happens to me I wonder if I am the only one!

Basically as the title says, when an ambulance is moving through traffic with their blue lights and I see people pulling to the side for them, I feel a big wave of emotion. For a few seconds I feel choked up like I'm about to burst into tears!

I very rarely cry and don't have anxiety so it's nothing like that. My only guess is that I feel emotional that the drivers are all pulling together to help the person who's in need of the ambulance.

I'd love to hear whether or not I'm alone! I'd feel stupid asking people in real life.

Yes I get this, always blow them a kiss and enjoy watching a good Red Sea parting of traffic too

Everytime I’m in London and see an ambulance I’m shocked how traffic doesn’t try to move for it, never seen this happen anywhere else and has been multiple occasions

Daily occurrence where I live, you’d be crying a lot down here! 🤣🤣🤣 yeah it’s nice people still are vaguely public spirited though I get you

I feel like it too, OP. I believe mine comes from having had family members blue lighted to hospital, and I think of the drivers who would have pulled over to help them make their journey to the hospital. For my sister, it was the last journey she took, which I think adds to the feeling.

Oh gosh, I came out of a devastating scan when pregnant at Christmas time to a choir and a Salvation Army band. O Come All Ye Faithful. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen or even think about it ever again without choking up. It was beautiful but I felt such resentment at the festive cheer surrounding me, totally oblivious to me, sobbing and feeling like my heart was physically breaking. My DC is here now and things are so much better then we were told they’d be that day. So hopefully it’ll be happy tears when I hear a choir or a Salvation Army band this Christmas.

OP, I wonder if you also had a moment, perhaps in your unconscious now, that triggers this response in you.

It’s the pure, unadulterated joy that does it for me with children signing in assembly!

It was gut wrenching. I rang her neighbour and asked to knock on her door while I was on my way but hadn’t realised they had looked through her window and saw her on the floor and called the ambulance.
I got in there before the ambulance and found her, I was 6 months pregnant at the time. I’m due in 2 weeks now, I’ll miss my lovely Mum forever. She was only 57 💔

Yes, genuine pulling together of community to help one another yes, so stopping at the scene of an accident or breakdown when you don't have to, or helping someone that's fallen in the street, yes, that gives a bit of an emotional feeling. But getting out of the way of emergency vehicles is just that, getting out of the way, you're not helping as such, just making sure you don't hinder them and you are obliged to do so. Whereas you're not obliged to slow down for a hearse but people do it out of respect and courtesy so that is more community-minded.

To those saying it must trigger a memory in me, I really can't think of anything. I'm extremely lucky that I've never lost anybody close to me or had a traumatic ambulance experience.

So interesting there are lots of people like me! But I'm sorry to hear that for some it comes from a bad past experience

Yup, I sometimes get all teary when I see the traffic part to let them through.
Im not an emotional person at all so its probably only when I get hormonal, then again Im also likely to cry at adverts and sappy songs around this time too!

It's the law where I live to pull over for emergency vehicles.

Everybody does it, apart from people stuck in a turning lane who can't anticipate where an emergency vehicle might be heading at an intersection and would risk just getting in the way if they were to move. Anyone stuck like that stays put even if it means missing the green light.

I've never felt emotional about it.

It's also the rule of the road here to let funeral processions have right of way and not butt in at an intersection or when leaving a shop, etc.. Cars in the procession drive with their hazard lights flashing and have funeral parlour-issued signs on their windows. They can drive through red lights and past stop signs and yield signs. They have to pull over and stop for emergency vehicles though.
If a car somehow gets separated from the procession, they are obliged to observe the normal rules of the road.

Decades ago (I’m old) before the hospital was built in Livingston ambulances from accidents on the M8 had to get into the royal in central Edinburgh. There was a system involving police motorcycles who speed ahead to junctions and held up all traffic for the ambulance to speed through. I can remember once waiting at Haymarket with all 5 roads of traffic waiting patiently as in the distance you could hear a siren. I cried then and still do now as I think about it.

Same. I live in a very RC city in the US. People bless themselves when a funeral procession goes by too. Not all the people, obv, but a fair number.

Yes, I feel this. For the same reason as you but also because my stepdaughter is a paramedic and I wonder if it’s her and what horrors she’s going to. 💔

I get this with funeral processions, especially when I see pedestrians stopping and bowing their heads.

I remember sitting in the limo behind my younger brothers hearse as we left our family home. We’d lived on that road for many years and knew or were familiar with so many people there. As we left, so many of them came out to pay their respects and seeing them wait and bow as we went past was incredibly moving. And as we went on I’d see so many people stop and make the sign of the cross or nod their heads.

It was a small mark of humanity in a sea of our utter desperation.

Ive always done this when I see funeral processions and seeing others do it tugs on my heart a bit.

I do too.. it’s lovely seeing the respect.
i live ambulance officers .. I am a rural GP and so deal with them a lot when handing over patients.
In my nearest city there was a shooting at 2 mosques… ambulance and police literally where prepared to sacrifice their lives going into the mosques to save the injured and the dying when there was possibly still a live shooter….it’s amazing to me and they deserve profound respect.

I also get choked up when I see this. When my DD (now 18!!) learned to talk she asked what the sound was and I told her …. Afterwards she would always say, ‘mummy, someone is hurt’ every time we were out and heard an ambulance. Made me tear up every time!

I always say Bless them, I hope whoever it is survives.

It’s like witnessing our last shred of humanity isn’t it.
One day we won’t ~ we will think fuck it II’m staying put .

I'm exactly the same.

I don’t but I am glad we are civilised enough to do it.

I do this too! I thought it was just me. It reminds me that despite all the craziness there's still a lot of good people in this world.

Hi OP, a family member had a brain haemorrhage and I raced behind the ambulance on a dark rainy December evening at about 6pm. I'll never forget drivers realising I was with the ambulance and holding back or pullover for me.

We get out the way for emergency services because its the law but, everyone that night was so kind to me, I wish I could thank them.

I get like this with motorbikes 🥺🤣

I get chocked up when everyone moves out of the way. My Mums life was saved by paramedics, I think thats part of it. If they had been delayed she would have died.