To expect that an ambulance car should not be travelling at 70 in a 30 zone near a school.

[smartiejake]

Had a very close thing yesterday with an ambulance car that missed our car by a literally a whisker racing round a blind bend in a 30 zone at at least 70mph (we were pulling out of a side road). He was going so fast we didn't hear his sirens till he was in our faces.

One witness to the near miss was so shocked he turned round his car and followed us flashing us down in a side road. He had spotted a dent in the side of our car and wanted to check we knew it was there (it was an old dent). He was outraged at how fast the car had been travelling and pressed us to complain.

Is it really reasonable that an ambulance racing to someone's aid should really risk the lives of other road users?

If he had hit our car my dd and dh would have been toast.

yabu

I think emergancy vehicles should assess the road conditions and the area whether they are on route to an emergency or not. I mean if he had hit you he wouldn't have got to where he was going and could have done serious damage to your family too so no yanbu!

I appreciate that a speedy response saves lives but if you misjudge that speed or can't handle it then it can cost lives.

if his sirens were on (which they must have been as you said you didn't hear them until he was in your face) then surely you must have heard them coming??

YANBU - ambulance drivers are not given the right to drive like lunatics. There have been cases where ambulance crews have been prosecuted for dangerous driving, IIRC.

They are, quite rightly, expected to judge the road conditions and drive safely.

Maybe he'd only just switched the siren on?

Was it throwing out time at the school?

If it was - YANBU

If the kids were all holed up inside then YABU IMO

There are a lot of paramedics who treat a code 1 lights and sirens response as a reason to drive like a maniac. I have been driven down the motorway before at 170kph. I was terriifed and it wasnt even life threating (just an amputated arm )
Most paras know the area like the back of thier hand and do drive safely when at speed but there are always some who don't. You can complain if you want. You know the time and location so they can identify the para but in the end you were ok, they got to where they were going and unfortuntealy there are response times that must be met. It is silly but paras have to be at the location within a time frame. Depending on the service its between 8 and 10 minutes. Silly isnt it.

He did have his sirens on. Neither me, my dh, my dds or the witness who stopped us heard them.

As I said he was travelling at a ridiculous speed around a blind bend.

Well, it ain't going to help their response time statistics if the bloody ambulance crashes, is it?

Unless they actually use that as a positive 'ambulance immediately on scene'.

agree with edam. If I had an emergency condition, I would like to get to the hospital, not crash halfway. And preferably not leaving a pile of bodies in my wake.

An ambulance crashed near my house a couple of years ago - collided with a BMW on a roundabout. Ambulance overturned and both the patient and the BMW driver were killed.

hmm, if your child was in a serious condition im sure youd have a different POV

i think it was a mistake, not all ambulance crews rush around like maniacs and i always felt that having seen first hand the damage caused by dangerous driver they were cautious

to be fair to the op i think an actual ambulance is slightly easier to spot than a raramedic car just due to the increased height over other vehicles, though a blind bend is a blind bend.....

i think that an ambulance driver was prosecuted (banned?) for driving at high speeds on an empty motorway in the early hours one morning with a transport organ, so im sure that they do have to stick within certain guidelines

YANBU. I've had a number of near misses with ambulances including one who suddenly switched to the wrong side of the road as I was turning at a junction.

I don't see why he didn't have his sirens on. that is all he did wrong IMO.

The sirens and flashing lights are the warning to other road users...having been waiting for and in the back of one in agony I am afraid I think road users should just bear with these life saving vehicles./

Nailpolish - if my child was in a serious condition, I'd rather that the paramedic got to me safely than crashed en route. If the OP had pulled out of the side road a second or two earlier, as she said, she, her dh and her dd would have been killed, as would the paramedic (in all probability), and I don't think this would have helped the person they were rushing to save.

Frankly, even if the crash had happened and no-one had been hurt, the paramedic would still have been seriously delayed - again, not helpful to the person waiting for help.

I have accompanied ambulance crews as part of my nurse training, and they are supposed to get to the patient as fast as possible but without endangering other road users.

YABU. He had sirens on - what more do you want ? I hope that if you or your child ever need an ambulance you won't feel the need to complain if they arrive later than you expect You have responsibility as a road user to be fully aware of the conditions in which you are driving - that includes 'listening'

YABU unless of course it was your dying relative they were rushing to and you didn't mind them waiting those precious extra minutes for help?

I too really don't understand how you didn't hear the sirens. It's not like they don't make enough noise.

YANBU - the first principle of rescue & first aid is that you do not endanger yourself or other people.

With regard to the sirens, it is pretty well known that it's not easy to distinguish where the noise is coming from, and I can quite easily believe that, if the driver was going that fast, the sound might be even more distorted, so that the OP (and her dh and the witness to the accident) all failed to hear it. Sound does funny things and I can believe that, for whatever reason of physics and sound, the sound of the siren didn't reach the OP.

There has been discussion in the past about changing british emergency vehicle sirens so that they are more easy to place directionally speaking.

And the driver of the ambulance has a responsibility too, Sassybeast - he is supposed to obey the rules of the road and to drive with sufficient care that he doesn't endanger other road users - because as I said before, if he is involved in an accident, even a minor one, that will cause far more of a delay in his reaching the patient than slowing down a bit round a blind bend would!!

Stayingsunnygirl - I'm very well aware of the responsibilities of an ambulance driver thanks

YANBU - I'm sure the guidelines back you up. Emergency vehicles are expected to be travelling at high speed but under control and taking into account other road users and road conditions in general. Hence, you will see them slow up a little at pedestrian crossings and so on if it is busy.

Sirens were probably turned on as they approached the bend, as they are when hitting an area where there may be pedestrians or cars at junctions, hence you only heard it at the last second.

Unfortunately, it is about risk management so if you were coming out of a little used side road onto an otherwise clear main road with a high speed limit then you may be classed as an unfortunate victim if you had crashed. However, the blind bend is what makes this poor weighing of risk factors imo.

It makes no difference whether we'd like ambulances to get to us or our DC quickly, the fact is we are all equal and deserving of life so preservation of it as important to the bystnders as it is to the ambulance crew and the child with arm hanging off down the road.