Editorial: Stupid drivers ignore sirens

Bay drivers need to work on pulling over when a emergency vehicle is trying to pass with their siren on.

It beggars belief that Bay motorists are so oblivious to others on the road that they are holding up emergency vehicles with lights flashing and sirens wailing.

Or maybe they do realise what they are doing.

I can imagine it: I've got an appointment, I'm running late - I'll just zip through this roundabout and then the fire truck can pass me. It won't take long.

We reported in Tuesday's Bay of Plenty Times that two vehicles kept going through a busy roundabout despite lights flashing on a fire truck.

Greerton Fire Service station officer Richard Moreland said: "This is not an isolated incident. It would be fair to say in probably 50 per cent of our callouts we get motorists not pulling over or stopping to let us pass."

What was that? Fifty per cent? What an awful statistic.

In the past, I was a victim of a home invasion. A man had decided to throw pieces of wood through my kitchen window. While I was on the phone to the 111 call-taker the seconds seemed like minutes, the minutes seemed like hours. "When were the police coming?" I kept asking him. In reality the whole incident was much shorter and the police did eventually arrive.

However, I would have been horrified to know that the police might have been held up getting to me because someone decided their appointment was more important than my emergency.

These emergency workers are tasked with the unenviable job of getting to an emergency as safely and as quickly as possible.

God forbid that delay was the difference between a tragedy happening or everything turning out all right.

I think Tauranga Fire Senior Station Officer Kevin Cowper sums it up perfectly: "For those who deliberately don't pull over or try to beat the fire truck they should think about the fact that we might be on our way to an emergency involving their property or someone they know."