To think there shouldn’t be consequences for going through a red light - when it’s to let an emergency vehicle through?

[hayleylauren]

Obviously only if it’s safe to do so.

It is a tricky one. One on hand, you don't want to obstruct an emergency service vehicle getting to a job, but on the other you are also causing a danger... and if given points could result in losing a license or your job.

From what I gather, no driver of an emergency vehicle should be pressurising someone to run a red light.

I’ve seen cars going up pavements, going forward into red light zones and also not pulling over! My instinct is to let blue lights through. Often this can result in an illegal manoeuvre in built up areas but it’s not likely to kill anyone as everyone is travelling slowly. The ambulance not reaching someone worries me more to be honest.

It’s in the high way code you don’t break the law for an ambulance. Someone local had a police car and ambulance behind them and drove at speed to ‘help them ‘ no - you don’t drive a red light.

I recently heard someone (a bus driver) say that emergency vehicles do not blast sirens when traffic is being held back by a red light, as it’s considered dangerous to push traffic to go through the stop light. The sirens you hear are often on approach to junctions that are flowing. I never knew that. Does anyone know if that’s correct?

It’s illegal. By going through a red light you could be adding to the emergency (even if you think that it’s safe to do so).

They are supposed to turn off the sirens at red lights and I would be very shocked if they didn’t.

If the photos of the offence show an emergency vehicle at the time you were forced to go through the light on red the notice is usually cancelled

This happened to me, not at a red light but I was in the left lane and the one to the right was a merging lane, literally no one had any space to move it was totally bottlenecked, eventually when the traffic did move slightly the person next to me in the merging lane was able to nip in front which at least allowed the ambulance to move past me. They literally sat there the whole time with sirens blasting when anyone could see there was nowhere for any of us to go at that point. I was stupidly trying to drive on to a cobbled slope to get out of the way but it was too steep. It was a horrible experience, plus the incident they were trying to get to was literally yards down the road. If it was that urgent one of them could have got out and got to the incident on foot in less than 2 mins instead of causing so much angst for other drivers.

Yes, we are supposed to silence the sirens (but don’t have to turn off the lights) if there’s no safe passage, though it’s controlled by double pressing the steering wheel and sometimes lots of the time you over or under press and all you do is change the tone 🙈.

If ambulance crew are leaving sirens blasting they’re either over enthusiastic newbies to emergency driving or nobs or both.

That’s interesting, thanks.