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."