JumboBeef
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I have said elsewhere in this forum that I would write a post about emergency driving from an ambulance driver’s point of view.
I work for the ambulance service and drive A&E ambulances on an emergency basis every working day. I have been trained to drive under emergency (and normal) conditions and hold qualifications to do so.
There is a lot of confusion about what a driver should do when they see an ambulance approaching on blue lights. There also seems to be a lot of confusion regarding what an ambulance can and cannot do legally.
When working on an ambulance, you are (generally) double crewed, and you (generally) take it in turns to drive and to attend the patient. There are two types of A&E jobs: doctors’ urgents and emergencies. Urgents have a larger window time wise for the service to respond to, and are typically people at home who have been visited by a doctor who need to go into hospital asap, but not as an emergency. Doctors’ appointments into hospital which have less urgency are not normally dealt with by the A&E side but by the PTS (patient transport service) side, which typically have minibus-type vehicles marked up as ‘ambulance’ but without blue lights or sirens. Sirens, by the way, are controlled through the vehicle horn when 999 mode is activated, and typically there are two siren modes: wail for long distance/high speed driving and yelp for approaching hazards.
An emergency is typically a 999 call. These calls are passed to the crew at the station (or on the road if they are out). You have 60 seconds from answering the phone in the station to going mobile in the ambulance. In some rural areas, some services operate an ‘on-call’ service where the crew works the day but can be called from their beds during the night. With an on-call emergency, you are given three minutes to go mobile. Try it some day: from fast asleep in your birthday suit in bed, to being fully dressed, in your motor and driving within three minutes………..
Government guidelines state that at least 75% of 999 calls need to have the ambulance at scene within eight minutes (that’s eight minutes of the call being received by control. They have one minute to allocate the job to you, and you then have one minute to go mobile so you are already down to six minutes). There is a second guideline of 95% of calls need to met within 19 minutes in more rural areas.
Driving an ambulance allows you to claim certain exemptions from road traffic laws as long as, and here is the most important bit, you can justify claiming the exemption and that the exemption is claimed because it is in the patient’s best interest.
Here are some of the road traffic exemptions which can be claimed by an ambulance driver:
However, an ambulance driver cannot claim exemptions to the following laws/rules:
All of these are with the footnote: ‘unless under police instruction/direction’, in which case you can do anything they ask you to.
The most important one you cannot claim exemption from, as listed above, is the ‘cannot cross a solid line white’, which can be the biggest issue of them all, and I’ll come to why later.
When can you claim exemptions? There is a common misconception that an ambulance can only claim exemptions when the blue lights are on: not true. As shown above, using the blue lights are, in themselves, an exemption.
You wouldn’t use the blue lights to park on double yellow lights outside a patient’s house (unless you were causing an obstruction, in which case should you be there in the first place? Consider ‘dangerous parking’, which you are not exempt from).
On a doctor’s urgent call, you wouldn’t use the blue lights en-route (unless the patient’s condition, in your opinion, required rapid transport into hospital) but you might claim other exemptions, such as parking on yellow lines or using bus lanes (which you are allowed to do with a patient on board or travelling to a patient).
The other main exemption which you may claim on an emergency call is regarding the speed limit. The law says:
You also do not need to use blue lights when claiming exemption to the speed limit, but it is very rare (but not impossible) that you would do this (and the first thing which would be asked of you if had an accident and you were claiming exemption to the speed limit would be if you had your blue lights activated).
An interesting note to this is that someone who is a trained medical and driver professional (ie: working for the ambulance service) may be able to claim exemptions in their own private car, if they could justify it, ie: they had found an ill person on the road who was in their opinion time critical and needed to get to hospital asap. I wouldn’t like to stand up in Court and defend this though: it is all down to how you interpret the law!
If you have an accident when on an emergency drive, it is deemed that the accident was your fault, whatever happened. If you treat a red light as a give way and have an accident, then the police will want to have a word with you in the same way if you failed to give way at a give way sign and had an accident on a normal drive. Plus when on an emergency drive and driving on the wrong side of the road etc, you are not where other drivers might expect to find a vehicle and so they may not react in a way you might wish them to (they might not see you at all!)
Above, I mentioned that an ambulance driver cannot claim exemption to crossing a solid white line. This can cause major problems out on the road as most drivers seem to assume that an ambulance can do what it wants.
Imagine you are driving at 60mph on a single carriageway, with double white lines down the middle of the road. The road is straight with good visibility and no other traffic. An ambulance is approaching from behind at approx 80mph. What do you do?
Most drivers would slow down to allow the ambulance to pass. But he cannot pass legally, so the ambulance draws nearer but does not overtake. What does the driver do? Invariably slow down even more, whilst saying to themselves ‘go on then, I’ve slowed down, you have a clear road, overtake!’ Legally, the ambulance cannot overtake!
The car slows even more, say to 20mph, but does not slow more or stop. If he stopped, then the ambulance can over take but whilst that car is still moving, even at walking pace then legally the ambulance cannot overtake.
The ambulance driver is then put in the position of crawling along at 20mph, or to cross the white line and risk prosecution by the police (in the same way any other driver would be prosecuted for crossing a white line). You would not believe how many drivers also do finally stop, but on a blind bend or brow. The ambulance then has to crawl past, putting themselves into potential danger.
What a driver should do is to pull over and stop off the road totally, in a lay-by if possible and if it is safe to do so. If they cannot pull safely off the road totally, then continue to drive at the speed limit (don’t speed up!) until such time that either the car can pull over or the ambulance can safely pass. The ambulance will know what you are trying to do, and thank you for it!
A ‘good’ emergency driver will drive with consideration to other drivers. They will position the vehicle so that it conveys information to the other drivers where they want to go. For example, if you wish to pass other vehicles on the offside, then you would straggle the centre of the road ~ if you wish to go up the middle of two lines of traffic, then you would position yourself over both lanes. An emergency vehicle sitting square behind another vehicle is not going to help that other driver understand what the emergency driver wants.
When driving, you are in control of the situation. The other traffic ‘should’ understand what you want of them and pull over/let you through etc. When other drivers (and even pedestrians) try to help in anyway by trying to clear a way/manage other traffic/etc, it does two things. One, it can distract the other drivers away from what the ambulance driver wants them to do and as the ‘good Samaritan’ cannot know exactly what the ambulance driver wants, it can lead to confusion: confusion leads to delays and/or accidents. Secondly, the last thing the ambulance driver wants is yet another distraction whilst trying to negotiate traffic. In the same way, please do not follow an ambulance though traffic: if you do, then again the ambulance driver will have you, on top of everything else around him, to worry about.
Red lights. The law is clear on this: you, as a non-emergency driver, must not cross a red light at anytime, even to allow an emergency vehicle through (unless directed to do so by the police). However, if you can move over to allow the vehicle though please do so. Yes, most people do cross the line by a few feet to allow an ambulance though and although there have been cases in the papers about drivers receiving penalties for doing so from the police, in the vast majority of cases the police will not take any action (if you have only crossed the line enough to allow the emergency vehicle through, and not kept on going).
When Joe Public see an ambulance rushing down the road, exceeding the speed limit, passing red lights and driving on the wrong side of the road, they might think ‘that must be a blast’. Trust me, the novelty of it wears off very quickly. An ambulance is rushing because it is going to an emergency or has a time critical patient on board: the words ‘child with breathing difficulties’ or ‘RTC with persons trapped’ can make your blood run cold. The crew have got that to think about rather than ‘enjoy’ the drive. Also, as the driver, you are taking your lives (you, your crew mate and the patient) in your hands on each emergency drive, not to mention that if you get it wrong and have an accident you could find yourself in court on very serious driving charges. Your crew mate in the back will be attending the patient which will mean they might be standing or moving around without a seatbelt on.
Also, not every emergency drive requires speed. You might be transporting a patient with suspected spinal injuries for example and so in this case you might be driving under the speed limit but wish to keep, as much as possible, to a constant speed. Corners might be taken very wide and the ambulance might drive on the wrong side of the road because of potholes etc. Please give an ambulance space to do what it needs to do, no matter how weird the driving might seem!
So there you have it: it is all a lovely grey area legally as to when you can or cannot claim exemptions to certain road traffic laws. Get it wrong and you might end up in court, lose your job, or kill someone. If you see an ambulance, please let it pass, but do it safely!
Finally, if you wish to improve your own driving, then buy a copy of Roadcraft and read it from cover to cover.
I work for the ambulance service and drive A&E ambulances on an emergency basis every working day. I have been trained to drive under emergency (and normal) conditions and hold qualifications to do so.
There is a lot of confusion about what a driver should do when they see an ambulance approaching on blue lights. There also seems to be a lot of confusion regarding what an ambulance can and cannot do legally.
When working on an ambulance, you are (generally) double crewed, and you (generally) take it in turns to drive and to attend the patient. There are two types of A&E jobs: doctors’ urgents and emergencies. Urgents have a larger window time wise for the service to respond to, and are typically people at home who have been visited by a doctor who need to go into hospital asap, but not as an emergency. Doctors’ appointments into hospital which have less urgency are not normally dealt with by the A&E side but by the PTS (patient transport service) side, which typically have minibus-type vehicles marked up as ‘ambulance’ but without blue lights or sirens. Sirens, by the way, are controlled through the vehicle horn when 999 mode is activated, and typically there are two siren modes: wail for long distance/high speed driving and yelp for approaching hazards.
An emergency is typically a 999 call. These calls are passed to the crew at the station (or on the road if they are out). You have 60 seconds from answering the phone in the station to going mobile in the ambulance. In some rural areas, some services operate an ‘on-call’ service where the crew works the day but can be called from their beds during the night. With an on-call emergency, you are given three minutes to go mobile. Try it some day: from fast asleep in your birthday suit in bed, to being fully dressed, in your motor and driving within three minutes………..
Government guidelines state that at least 75% of 999 calls need to have the ambulance at scene within eight minutes (that’s eight minutes of the call being received by control. They have one minute to allocate the job to you, and you then have one minute to go mobile so you are already down to six minutes). There is a second guideline of 95% of calls need to met within 19 minutes in more rural areas.
Driving an ambulance allows you to claim certain exemptions from road traffic laws as long as, and here is the most important bit, you can justify claiming the exemption and that the exemption is claimed because it is in the patient’s best interest.
Here are some of the road traffic exemptions which can be claimed by an ambulance driver:
Using audible and visible warning devices.
Exceeding statutory speed restrictions.
Treating a red traffic signal as a ‘give way’.
Passing either side of a ‘keep left/right’ sign.
Entering a pedestrian area.
Stopping on a clearway.
Parking on double yellow lines.
Parking on zig zag lines.
Parking on footway/central reservation.
Parking on offside of road after dark.
Showing a white floodlight to the rear of a stationary vehicle.
Driving and parking on the hard shoulder of a motorway.
Using restricted motorway access roads.
There are others.Exceeding statutory speed restrictions.
Treating a red traffic signal as a ‘give way’.
Passing either side of a ‘keep left/right’ sign.
Entering a pedestrian area.
Stopping on a clearway.
Parking on double yellow lines.
Parking on zig zag lines.
Parking on footway/central reservation.
Parking on offside of road after dark.
Showing a white floodlight to the rear of a stationary vehicle.
Driving and parking on the hard shoulder of a motorway.
Using restricted motorway access roads.
However, an ambulance driver cannot claim exemptions to the following laws/rules:
Dangerous/careless driving/parking.
Failing to stop after an accident.
Overtaking on zig zags.
Failing to obey a red light on traffic signals controlling a level crossing/airfield/fire stations.
Failing to obey a one way sign/no right or no left turn/one way traffic sign.
Crossing or straddling a solid white line (except as stated in the highway code for all road users).
There more of these too.Failing to stop after an accident.
Overtaking on zig zags.
Failing to obey a red light on traffic signals controlling a level crossing/airfield/fire stations.
Failing to obey a one way sign/no right or no left turn/one way traffic sign.
Crossing or straddling a solid white line (except as stated in the highway code for all road users).
All of these are with the footnote: ‘unless under police instruction/direction’, in which case you can do anything they ask you to.
The most important one you cannot claim exemption from, as listed above, is the ‘cannot cross a solid line white’, which can be the biggest issue of them all, and I’ll come to why later.
When can you claim exemptions? There is a common misconception that an ambulance can only claim exemptions when the blue lights are on: not true. As shown above, using the blue lights are, in themselves, an exemption.
You wouldn’t use the blue lights to park on double yellow lights outside a patient’s house (unless you were causing an obstruction, in which case should you be there in the first place? Consider ‘dangerous parking’, which you are not exempt from).
On a doctor’s urgent call, you wouldn’t use the blue lights en-route (unless the patient’s condition, in your opinion, required rapid transport into hospital) but you might claim other exemptions, such as parking on yellow lines or using bus lanes (which you are allowed to do with a patient on board or travelling to a patient).
The other main exemption which you may claim on an emergency call is regarding the speed limit. The law says:
By virtue of Section 87 Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (as amended by Section 19 Road Safety Act 2006),
No statutory provision imposing a speed limit on motor vehicles shall apply to any vehicle on an occasion when
(a) it is being used for fire and rescue authority purposes or for or in connection with the exercise of any function of a relevant authority as defined in section 6 of the Fire Act 2005, for Ambulance purposes or for Police or Serious Organised Crime Agency purposes,
(b) it is being used for other prescribed purposes in such circumstances as may be prescribed, or
(c) it is being used for training persons to drive vehicles for use for any of the purposes mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) above, if the observance of that provision would be likely to hinder the use of the
vehicle for the purpose for which it was being used on that occasion.
(2) Subsection (1) above does not apply unless the vehicle is being driven by a person who-
(a) has satisfactorily completed a course of training in the driving of vehicles at high speed provided in accordance with regulations under this section, or
(b) is driving the vehicle as part of such a course.
So, you can claim exemption from the speed limit as long as you can justify it, and it is in the patient’s best interest to do so. You cannot claim exemption to the speed limit if the patient’s condition does not require it, ie: the patient’s condition is not time critical and it is not imperative they get to hospital in the shortest possible time.No statutory provision imposing a speed limit on motor vehicles shall apply to any vehicle on an occasion when
(a) it is being used for fire and rescue authority purposes or for or in connection with the exercise of any function of a relevant authority as defined in section 6 of the Fire Act 2005, for Ambulance purposes or for Police or Serious Organised Crime Agency purposes,
(b) it is being used for other prescribed purposes in such circumstances as may be prescribed, or
(c) it is being used for training persons to drive vehicles for use for any of the purposes mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) above, if the observance of that provision would be likely to hinder the use of the
vehicle for the purpose for which it was being used on that occasion.
(2) Subsection (1) above does not apply unless the vehicle is being driven by a person who-
(a) has satisfactorily completed a course of training in the driving of vehicles at high speed provided in accordance with regulations under this section, or
(b) is driving the vehicle as part of such a course.
You also do not need to use blue lights when claiming exemption to the speed limit, but it is very rare (but not impossible) that you would do this (and the first thing which would be asked of you if had an accident and you were claiming exemption to the speed limit would be if you had your blue lights activated).
An interesting note to this is that someone who is a trained medical and driver professional (ie: working for the ambulance service) may be able to claim exemptions in their own private car, if they could justify it, ie: they had found an ill person on the road who was in their opinion time critical and needed to get to hospital asap. I wouldn’t like to stand up in Court and defend this though: it is all down to how you interpret the law!
If you have an accident when on an emergency drive, it is deemed that the accident was your fault, whatever happened. If you treat a red light as a give way and have an accident, then the police will want to have a word with you in the same way if you failed to give way at a give way sign and had an accident on a normal drive. Plus when on an emergency drive and driving on the wrong side of the road etc, you are not where other drivers might expect to find a vehicle and so they may not react in a way you might wish them to (they might not see you at all!)
Above, I mentioned that an ambulance driver cannot claim exemption to crossing a solid white line. This can cause major problems out on the road as most drivers seem to assume that an ambulance can do what it wants.
Imagine you are driving at 60mph on a single carriageway, with double white lines down the middle of the road. The road is straight with good visibility and no other traffic. An ambulance is approaching from behind at approx 80mph. What do you do?
Most drivers would slow down to allow the ambulance to pass. But he cannot pass legally, so the ambulance draws nearer but does not overtake. What does the driver do? Invariably slow down even more, whilst saying to themselves ‘go on then, I’ve slowed down, you have a clear road, overtake!’ Legally, the ambulance cannot overtake!
The car slows even more, say to 20mph, but does not slow more or stop. If he stopped, then the ambulance can over take but whilst that car is still moving, even at walking pace then legally the ambulance cannot overtake.
The ambulance driver is then put in the position of crawling along at 20mph, or to cross the white line and risk prosecution by the police (in the same way any other driver would be prosecuted for crossing a white line). You would not believe how many drivers also do finally stop, but on a blind bend or brow. The ambulance then has to crawl past, putting themselves into potential danger.
What a driver should do is to pull over and stop off the road totally, in a lay-by if possible and if it is safe to do so. If they cannot pull safely off the road totally, then continue to drive at the speed limit (don’t speed up!) until such time that either the car can pull over or the ambulance can safely pass. The ambulance will know what you are trying to do, and thank you for it!
A ‘good’ emergency driver will drive with consideration to other drivers. They will position the vehicle so that it conveys information to the other drivers where they want to go. For example, if you wish to pass other vehicles on the offside, then you would straggle the centre of the road ~ if you wish to go up the middle of two lines of traffic, then you would position yourself over both lanes. An emergency vehicle sitting square behind another vehicle is not going to help that other driver understand what the emergency driver wants.
When driving, you are in control of the situation. The other traffic ‘should’ understand what you want of them and pull over/let you through etc. When other drivers (and even pedestrians) try to help in anyway by trying to clear a way/manage other traffic/etc, it does two things. One, it can distract the other drivers away from what the ambulance driver wants them to do and as the ‘good Samaritan’ cannot know exactly what the ambulance driver wants, it can lead to confusion: confusion leads to delays and/or accidents. Secondly, the last thing the ambulance driver wants is yet another distraction whilst trying to negotiate traffic. In the same way, please do not follow an ambulance though traffic: if you do, then again the ambulance driver will have you, on top of everything else around him, to worry about.
Red lights. The law is clear on this: you, as a non-emergency driver, must not cross a red light at anytime, even to allow an emergency vehicle through (unless directed to do so by the police). However, if you can move over to allow the vehicle though please do so. Yes, most people do cross the line by a few feet to allow an ambulance though and although there have been cases in the papers about drivers receiving penalties for doing so from the police, in the vast majority of cases the police will not take any action (if you have only crossed the line enough to allow the emergency vehicle through, and not kept on going).
When Joe Public see an ambulance rushing down the road, exceeding the speed limit, passing red lights and driving on the wrong side of the road, they might think ‘that must be a blast’. Trust me, the novelty of it wears off very quickly. An ambulance is rushing because it is going to an emergency or has a time critical patient on board: the words ‘child with breathing difficulties’ or ‘RTC with persons trapped’ can make your blood run cold. The crew have got that to think about rather than ‘enjoy’ the drive. Also, as the driver, you are taking your lives (you, your crew mate and the patient) in your hands on each emergency drive, not to mention that if you get it wrong and have an accident you could find yourself in court on very serious driving charges. Your crew mate in the back will be attending the patient which will mean they might be standing or moving around without a seatbelt on.
Also, not every emergency drive requires speed. You might be transporting a patient with suspected spinal injuries for example and so in this case you might be driving under the speed limit but wish to keep, as much as possible, to a constant speed. Corners might be taken very wide and the ambulance might drive on the wrong side of the road because of potholes etc. Please give an ambulance space to do what it needs to do, no matter how weird the driving might seem!
So there you have it: it is all a lovely grey area legally as to when you can or cannot claim exemptions to certain road traffic laws. Get it wrong and you might end up in court, lose your job, or kill someone. If you see an ambulance, please let it pass, but do it safely!
Finally, if you wish to improve your own driving, then buy a copy of Roadcraft and read it from cover to cover.
We do that too 
