Take That, Cabbie!
Commenting on a recent post, one reader brought up the subject of drivers who follow too closely behind emergency vehicles. This reminded me of a situation I observed several years ago.
We'd responded to a call in East Boston. To get to the hospital, we would travel through the mile-long Sumner Tunnel beneath Boston Harbor. This is an old tunnel, and a small one, with just two lanes in a single direction. At rush hour, both lanes fill with cars. Fortunately, the tunnel itself acts as a kind of megaphone, carrying the noise of the siren far ahead of the ambulance. Drivers in the left lane merge with the right, clearing the left lane for us.
We picked up the patient and headed back into the tunnel. The siren echoed. Cars moved right. Our ambulance accelerated through the empty left lane.
Behind us, a taxi driver saw his chance. Rather than sitting in traffic for another thirty minutes, he would follow us through the tunnel. This is a dangerous practice, and an illegal one, yet it happens all the time, with cab drivers the most frequent offenders. He pulled into the left lane behind us, and accelerated as we did, inches from our rear bumper. Together we raced past dozens of cars.
Ahead, another taxi driver got the same brilliant idea. He would wait for us to pass. Then he would pull into the left lane behind us, riding our bumper through the tunnel.
The cabbie in front of us cut his wheel. He watched the ambulance through his rearview mirror. As we roared by, he stepped on his accelerator, rocketed into the left lane, and--surprise!--smashed into the cab behind us. Metal and glass and plastic flew through the air as the other cab rammed the tunnel wall.
Looking back through the tunnel, I saw both cabbies emerge from the wreckage. They stood nose to nose, screaming at each other, blocking both lanes of traffic. Thanks to their stupidity, a lot of people would get home late. But they would earn no more fares that night, and I took some comfort from that.
posted by TS @ 1:01 AM
14 Comments:
As evil as this may sound, ha, I am glad that both cabbies learned a lesson that night. Ambulance chasing seems to be growing more and more prevalent; I have stopped more than once while responding (not with a critical patient, obviously) to tell someone to back off or the police will become involved.
It doesn't sound evil at all. Sadly, it takes something like this for offending drivers to learn a lesson.
I got a kick out of this! that's funny stuff. I just feel bad for all the others that got home late.
"When Cabbies Collide" could be a new series on Fox. Let's see, two cabs collide, traffic is screwed up for hours. The state police arrive. So, not only will they lose the revenue, they'll both be cited for something.
I love it when a plan (and cabs) come together!
Gotta love karma.
This happened just the other day while i was working for a private ambulance company we came upon an accident in the left lane of 93 in dorchester there were no injuries but we decided to wait till state police got there to clear because of the location. well someone had the bright idea to follow the SP up the high speed lane. and it was quite gratifying to see the trooper issue the driver a ticket before he delt with the accident
This is one issue on which we all seem to agree.
Every time I have seen an accident "due" to our response it has never been one like this that actually made me laugh out loud. Typically we'll have our siren going and some person coming out of a side street on our right will for whatever reason panic, throw the car in reverse (now mind you, they were never blocking our route of travel at any point) and slam into the car that just pulled up behind them. I can't even say how many times I have seen that. Not as fun as cabbies but still amusing. I always felt bad for the dude pulling up behind the panicking driver.
I see people tailgaing behind school busses, police cars, fire trucks and ambulances all of the time.
Another thing which is amazing is when everyone pulls over to the right to let an emergency vehicle pass, there is always the one or two guys who will attempt to pass everybody who pulled over. That is a specialty of the Jamaica Way.
I found your site from a recent Boston Globe article. I love it. I'm not in your field, but find your stories fascinating and educational.
I did want to share a recent experience. While sitting in the middle lane at a red light, sirens approached from behind just as my light turned green. It was an ambulance and fire truck.
There were a few cars in the left-turn lane and they cleared the lane before the emergency vehicles were close. The right-turn lane was already empty.
As the lead car in the middle lane, I thought it best to not move and let the emergency vehicles go around me since they had two clear lanes on either side. Now the light's green for about 10-20 seconds and the assholes behind me start honking their horns despite sirens blaring all around us.
Any thoughts? Should I have proceeded through the intersection and then pulled over?
Sometimes, life is fair.
Thanks to all three of you for sharing your stories.
That's a tough one, Major268. The law requires all drivers to pull all the way to the right and come to a complete stop. Now, if everyone did this, we wouldn't have any problems. We'd pass the stopped vehicles and proceed to the call.
Unfortunately, things don't always happen in the real world the way the law intends them to. Some drivers realize too late that an emergency vehicle is approaching them from behind. They're forced to make a choice--cut off the vehicle by swerving to the right, across its path; or move even further to the left in an effort to stay out of the way. Sometimes, pushing to the left is actually the better choice.
But here's the funny thing: Sometimes EMS people are too fickle. No matter what a person does in this situation, an EMT or paramedic is likely to complain. If the driver stays to the left, we'll respond with, "Don't you realize you're supposed to pull to the right?" And if the driver does try to pull over, we'll say, "What are you doing, cutting me off like that?"
The same principle applies to the situation you described. No matter what you do, we'll find a way to complain about it. The important thing is to get out of the way.
And if the drivers behind you don't understand this, and continue to beep, then shame on them.
Thanks for the question.
Some of the best driving maneuvers I have ever pulled off have been to get out of the way of emergency vehicles. One time I got to drive really fast through the airport tunnel because no one let me pull over and there was a State Trooper behind me who kept telling me to "JUST DRIVE!" over his microphone, and behind him was the ambulance with the sirens screaming. I was a new driver and when we got to the end of the tunnel, a BPD car pulled me over. I thought I was going to throw up and I was shaking like a leaf because I was sure I would never get to use the car again and that I was going to get arrested and that life as I knew it was over. But the officer was so nice and calmed me right down and asked me if I was ok to keep going. Definitely more fun in retrospect! I would never tailgate an ambulance though. It's bad luck. That and cutting a funeral procession - terrible bad luck...
Haha bloody cabbies, im a student doing my first prac with an Ambulance service in Australia, and on only my 2nd ever night shift a cabbie caused us to have an accident!. We were lights and sirens to a job when we came to a four way intersection where a cabbie in fornt of us was turning right (Remember, we drive on the left in Aus) With the elft lane blocked we went on the inside of the cab on the wrong side of the road. Just as he decided to turn directly i front of us, we T-boned him and bounced off into a set of traffice lights that ended up completely unerneath us. Thankfully no-one was hurt badly, but I did get to help extricate my supervising officer from the ambulance, not a bad story to take back to class!
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