Friday, I was traveling down a highway on my way home. There was traffic all over the place due to holiday shopping. People were blocking intersections and sticking the nose of their car in your lane regardless if you invited them to do so or not.
While I'm sitting in a line of cars waiting on a traffic signal that's cycled through twice already, I hear a siren. The first thing that I attempt to do is locate the emergency vehicle so I know what course of action that I need to take. Well, it appears that I was the only person who was formulating a strategy at the time. The ambulance was coming up from behind, so I forced my way into the slow lane to make room. There were about 10-15 vehicles ahead between me and the traffic signal. The light turned green and only two or three of them moved into the slow lane. The others continued on their merry way in the fast lane because they wanted to make sure that the traffic signal didn't catch them again.
Because of this, the ambulance had to ride behind with them with lights flashing and sirens blasting for roughly a full minute before being able to cross through the intersection and bolt up the middle turn lane. One vehicle even drove beside the ambulance for roughly 50 yards while the ambulance was in the turn lane.
Hopefully, no one suffered through a severe injury or, God forbid, died behind these idiots' decision to continue driving rather than pulling over. At one time, I would have blamed an incident like this on young drivers not knowing the rules of the road. However, the few faces that I saw who were blocking traffic were the faces of adults! Grown people who thought that it was more important to get through a traffic light than let an ambulance reach its emergency.
What's wrong with people these days? Why can't we get out of the way? Is our time more valuable than someone's life?
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