Tuesday, February 27, 2007

WooWOooWoooWoooHOOOONNNKKKK - Hey Kal?

So I'm driving home from work tonight and I hear sirens.

Now, unlike in Scotland where the emergency vehicles go "MeeMaw" according to my dearest Scots friend Kal, who should know, since he drives an ambulance and all that, our sirens all go WoooWoooWOOOWooo and then when they get to where there's someone in front of them, they honk like 30 times louder than a regular honking horn honks.

Now, when one is travelling at 45 mph down a busy street and hears sirens in the distance, if one is me, one looks first in front to see if there are flashing lights. Secondly to the rear - to know if one is coming behind me. Next to the left side, then to the right. If one cannot see the flashing lights, it is often exceptionally difficult to tell from which direction the sirens are blaring, even driving as I do without radio or other distractions.

What one also cannot do is see flashing lights THROUGH buildings and large piles of snow. I'm sooooooo sorry about that.

What had happened is that an ambulance was coming from a small, almost visually invisible side-street, which has buildings and snow-piles blocking visuals until one is almost directly on top of it. At 45 mph, this happens very quickly. To be 100% honest, I never even SAW the farking ambulance until it was HONKINGHONKINGHONKING in my right ear.

JEZUS PETE. I pulled over and stopped as quick as I could. I wasn't the ONLY one who couldn't see the bloody bastard, however, as another 4 cars behind me got past the intersection before the ambulance could pull out.

Now, I'm sure they teach something about this kind of crap in Ambulance Driver School, seeing as Kal had to go through all kinds of odd driving things and get a special license and all and even though he's in Scotland, I'm sure it's fairly similar here because they ARE just huge fucking trucks and all that, but you would think, being a rational individual as I'm sure you all are, that said Ambulance Driver Guy (and I am sexist-ly assuming this PERSON was a guy, since I don't know any Ambulance Driver Girls from Scotland or from here either) would have noticed on his way INTO the side-street that it had limited visual access and perhaps have gone ONE BLOODY FUCKING BLOCK TO THE EAST where there is, in fact, a HUGELY VISUALLY LOVELY AND OPEN intersection with a stoplight...

Then again, perhaps I should have just jammed on my brakes and caused a 4-car pileup in the intersection, thereby delaying the asshat even longer maybe?

712 days

4 comments:

John Good said...

Yikes! I hope you didn't soil yerself! =)

Peacechick Mary said...

The ambulance driver was probably laughing at his sick joke. Then again, maybe he got blood squirted in his eyes and just got crazy for a minute there. Glad you made it home safe and sound.

BBC said...

Umm, got me, everyone just does the best they can in a situation like that I guess.

I've seen women ambulance drivers.

The Future Was Yesterday said...

Maybe the company sent them out to cause accidents because business was slow?

Down here, sirens often echo off the hills and buildings, making it impossible to find out where they are. Ambulance/traffic accidents are a big problem. I see they recently switched over to the "stutter" siren for intersections. For some reason, that doesn't seem to echo as bad.