Often you can pull over the stop line, but not into the junction, which is what I try to do, a good driver should pre-empt an emergency vehicle coming behind, and pre-plan the requied action looking for a space to move to.
If you stop half a car's length from the stop-line as advised in Roadcraft?, this also give the advantage that you can set off when the lights turn RED+AMBER as by the time you reach the stop-line, they will have turned GREEN.
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news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/475426...m
"Emergency vehicles answering 999 calls were involved in more than 1,000 road accidents in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire last year, research has shown."
"One South Yorkshire firefighter told the programme: "Invariably, they [members of the public] have not got their minds on what is happening outside their vehicle.
"When we are responding to emergency calls sometimes we are giving these people a warning from a far distance but they do not seem to know we are there right until we are on top of them.
"They make strange manoeuvres and panic when they see the emergency vehicle coming towards them." "
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Quite agree IL, there aren't all that many junctions where you can't squeeze out of the way. Plod is usually decently polite about it too.
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Just read the second half of yr post. Being too quick on the green got me run into once by someone being very slow on the red, a bad combination which will inevitably occur sooner or later!
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HJ
From the 'old days' If Plod waves you through a red light he should first put his cape or coat over the lights. In doing so they do not conform to TSGD so no offence of failing to conform.
If he doesn't do so then technically catch 22 situation. You don't move against the red light when waved to to do so then offence of failing to conform to PC engaged in regulation of traffic. If you do go, there is no exemption to the public so fail to conform to traffic light.
dvd
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Despite everything said here, I would (and did last Friday) do whatever it took to get out of the way of a cop/ambulance/fire engine.
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I had a situation a few years back, second in a queue at some lights, ambulance came up behind and squeezed through and across the lights, as he crossed the lights they turned green, the van in front of me followed the ambulance across the lights, I followed the van, the van slammed on his brakes, I bumped the van, the driver apologised "sorry mate, I thought I was following the ambulance through a red light".
Clearly my fault for hitting the rear of the van though the van driver was not paying due care and attention, he also admitted being done for jumping the same lights previously which probably made him over react.
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Despite everything said here, I would (and did last Friday) do whatever it took to get out of the way of a cop/ambulance/fire engine.
A+ Adam. But my guess is that most members of this forum wd do the same. However read local yokel's post. You see people doing the most extraordinary things when sirens start going. The most usual is to place the vehicle to cause maximum obstruction and then freeze in panic.
Mind you, before the Livingstonist attitude to traffic management caught on there was often a lot more room for everyone especially at urban junctions.
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A+? There's a first time for everything!
I can see why people get panicked because it's something they've never really been trained for...even though you could argue that there's not much to train for to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle.
I remember when I first got the car and I was super careful...espcially after the "wheel incident" with the Fiesta. A cop came screaming past not one week after I got it - so I pushed the car onto the kerb as gently but quickly as I could (wincing too I might add) and was ready to move off again before he'd passed. Most other cars did exactly the same but there was one clown who just stopped mid road. (Heavy traffic).
Fortunately last week it was dead quiet. I was sitting at the lights wondering just where I was going to go for lunch and a Golf came around the corner with a little blue light on top. I did a double take having not seen one for so long but I pulled into the left and past the stop line enough for him to get past should a car come racing around the the bend (as they do). It's a pretty blind junction and they only slowed for the briefest of seconds. The speed he was going and the car being what it was, I assume it was something super serious.
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At 11am?
Stronger stomachs than mine!
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>You see people doing the most extraordinary things when sirens start going.
Yes, people panic.
I saw two cars stopped side-by-side at traffic lights a few months back. A fire engine stopped a few yards behind them, with lights and sirens going, waiting for one car to move aside. Both cars manouevered aside at low speed into one another, with a tinkling of glass and a cracking of bumpers. The fire engine squeezed through the gap and sped away.
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If you stop half a car's length from the stop-line as advised in Roadcraft?, this also give the advantage that you can set off when the lights turn RED+AMBER as by the time you reach the stop-line, they will have turned GREEN.
>>
Well that is the very last thing I would do at my local traffic lights AND there is a camera in one direction.
I am forced to adopt, wait for green then look and look again.
The amount of red light running is very high.
If I went on the green without a good look there are many times I would have been at serious risk of being hit by someone with their foot down doing 60 in a 40 area.
A couple of days ago I was aware of blues comimg up behind me while in a slow moving traffic queue.
I eased off the gas as others were but happened to be approaching an exit on the left from a carpark where a woman in a 4X4, the sort that give the driver extra visibiliy, was waiting to exit.
Although I gave her no indication, other than a small gap, I assume she thought I was giving way and she start to exit.
I hit the horn and main beam. She calmly carried on turning right and was nearly T-boned.
A Darwin case?
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As Adam, in this situation I would ALWAYS move out of the way safely, regardless of whether that put me through a red light. I don't care a fig what the rules are for that situation, I am not going to stubbornly obey them when doing so might be putting a life at risk.
On the other hand, were I then sent an NIP for running a red light in that situation, I would not pay any fine, and nor would I plead guilty regardless of magistrates advice.
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If you keep aware of the trafic and regularly check mirrors then this should not be an isue. I would simply make a jugment based on traffic conditions but catergoricly would only pull through a red if it had just changed or no other traffic waiting at junction.
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It seems to me that the law being the law, you would in that situation HAVE to plead guilty, as there would be photographic evidence of you breaking the law.
If you were to plead not guilty notwithstanding clear undisputed evidence of guilt, you would suffer more when found guilty - as you inevitably would be. The magistrates would be unable to take your guilty plea into account to reduce the penalty, as you wouldn't have made one.
They couldn't find you not guilty of the offence, however much they might want to.
Your hope lies in mitigation.
I imagine. I'm not a lawyer.
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I see your point on the semantics of it. I would strongly resist any attempt to get me to accept punishment then, put it like that instead.
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I thought it was a fundamental part of British law that the prosecution had to prove intention as well as fact? So if your intention was not to jump the lights, but merely to make way so that the police car could, then you could be found not guilty even though you had indisputably crossed the lights.
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Magistrate: I put it to you that this photograph from a roadside camera shows you travelling at 40mph in a 30mph limit. As such, you are guilty. *dons his black cap prior to sentencing*
Me: Ah, but your honour, I didn't intend to do it.
Magistrate: Oh ok then. Goodbye. Enjoy your day and all the best to Mrs Dipstick.
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Dipstick, why would the magistrate know your wife that well? I think we should be told... ;-)
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I thought it was a fundamental part of British law that the prosecution had to prove intention as well as fact? So if your intention was not to jump the lights, but merely to make way so that the police car could, then you could be found not guilty even though you had indisputably crossed the lights.
Some laws require the prosecution to prove intent as well as fact and some do not.
The obvious example of one that does not is speeding. It is an offence to exceed the speed limit - whether you intended to do so or not is irrelevant. If this was not the case then everyone could escape prosecution by simply saying "I didn't realise how fast I was going".
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Maybe slightly off topic, but I remember as a sprog being told that the only vehicle allowed to run a red light was the G.P.O. or am I going doolahly??
VBR..M.
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Martin, as I posted in a previous thread some considerable time back I was under the same impression but have never been able to get to the bottom of whether it was an urban myth or when it had ceased to be true. glad someone else has heard the same tale!
"When I worked with the GPO, as was, thirty plus years back I was told that Royal Mail vehicles were exempt from certain traffic law enforcement which would 'delay the progress of the Queen's Mail.' Exactly which laws I didn't stay around long enough to find out but I was told that the vehicle had to have the Crown on the side and was therefore a 'Crown vehicle' which gave it the exemption. Whether the Crown being part of the Royal Mail logo counts I wouldn't know but wouldn't it be one of those wonderful British idiosyncracies if they were exempt just because of a picture of a crown on the side."
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So that's why the letters don't come for weeks now. Bring back GPO privilege I say! And rubber wings as well!
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