What would you know, Ignorant American?!?
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To add to what AnonyMouse said, we do, but I saw that episode and remember being slightly confused by it. Unfortunately I canât remember exactly what was said but I donât think the implication was that Brits simply continue driving and ignore the sirens.
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Highway code, rule 219:
Emergency and Incident Support vehicles. You should look and listen for ambulances, fire engines, police, doctors or other emergency vehicles using flashing blue, red or green lights and sirens or flashing headlights, or Highways Agency Traffic Officer and Incident Support vehicles using flashing amber lights. When one approaches do not panic. Consider the route of such a vehicle and take appropriate action to let it pass, while complying with all traffic signs. If necessary, pull to the side of the road and stop, but try to avoid stopping before the brow of a hill, a bend or narrow section of road. Do not endanger yourself, other road users or pedestrians and avoid mounting the kerb. Do not brake harshly on approach to a junction or roundabout, as a following vehicle may not have the same view as you.
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I canât parse your comment⌠did you mean âIn that like all those other things, ăBritain isăbasically made upâ?
The driver of the green car didnât have to drive through the red light to make way for the firetruck. Just moving up to the stop line in the street wouldâve given the firetruck enough clearance to driver around him and continue on its way.
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Because the BBS system will only load a couple of screensfull of comments at a time, for some reason, so regular Ctrl-F is useless.
So itâs swallowing a spider to catch the fly, but at least the intention is benign.
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The idea that it is illegal to make way for emergency vehicles is made up. A person was fined by an automatic robo-camera, and could have had the fine removed if they had simply pointed out the circumstances, but instead they decided to sell the story to a tabloid for maximum outrage.
Americans often get tripped up by the Daily Mail, because thereâs somehow still a fairly strong tradition of integrity in American newspapers, and most papers that donât actually have UFOs on the cover can be trusted to at least be more reliable than, say, random blog posts. That doesnât appear to be the case in Britain. (The situation is reversed for TV news: compare the BBC to Fox.)
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It appears that you are required not to break any traffic laws when making way for emergency vehicles in the UK.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/33fyuy/giving_way_to_emergency_vehicles_at_controlled/
http://www.legal-lifeboat.co.uk/breaking-traffic-laws-when-moving-for-an-emergency-vehicle/
and @daneelâs quote of the law above.
I have to admit, Daily Fail links are like FNORDS to me, I just donât see them all too easily and was referring to the propensity for drivers in the UK to panic and freeze up when presented with such a situation. Perhaps @beschizza was making comment on the Fail article, which would seem to make sense given the context but I suspect he was also making comment on the formulation of the law itself, which is nannying and fits into a countrywide, social narrative of which all who hail from the UK are acutely aware.
I admit to some trepidation vis-a-vis âhow literal can this beâ before clicking.
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I just re watched the video, and it does look deliberate. Very much one of those sorts of Germans who does shit like this out of spite. A typical Skoda driver.
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Love ya man, but at least credit the Reddit thread from which this was lifted (even the info about the idiotic British rules, which was discussed there as well.)
Weâre equally all aware of the whinging fuckwits that go on about political correctness and health and safety gone mad endlessly - often the same crowd who begin sentences âIâm not racist butâŚâ and end it ââŚsomething has to be done about the immigrantsâ or ââŚwhy canât the Europeans leave pounds and ounces alone?â
That is, common tropes are one thing, but reality is quite another.
And that reality is what? I think Iâm missing some essential component to the conversation here. I agree that there is a common theme to the invective of some types of folk the world over but then you appear to go on to say that, that recognition notwithstanding, the reality of the situation constitutes something different. What is that different reality to which you are referring?
Someone mention my name?
I and several others have addressed the precise point several times; I donât see how repeating it again would succeed in enabling your comprehension. In fact, I donât believe that you donât comprehend, and am not sure what you are trying to achieve.
You were re-iterating the observation that even though it is explicitly denied by the law that âit just isnât illegalâ? Having to seek a certification of your actions after the fact and then present this in order to avoid prosecution certainly isnât the same thing. But perhaps you were making an argument that hasnât been disproved? Which is why I asked. I didnât assume that you were walking over the same, tired ground and, for the benefit of discourse, assumed you were attempting to make a new, sophisticated point which I was not quite getting. Which Iâm still assuming there is a chance of.
At any rate, even tidying up the explicitly formulated law regarding this situation so that apparent traffic infractions werenât begun to be prosecuted in circumstances such as making way for an emergency vehicle still wouldnât address the lack of training that seems to be a contributing factor to the issue of people not moving in the first place. So, to summarise, I would imagine some kind of reformulation of the law, coupled with better training (removing the nannying culture from the equation (giving greater freedom whilst also entrusting people with greater training)) would be a step forward.
But perhaps thatâs not what you meant, which is why I asked. It seems clear from my perspective, but thatâs only because Iâve explicitly addressed the situational information as it has evolved throughout the discussion without recourse to subtextual invective.
Love and kisses,
-Miasm
Youâve never had an instance where you went to do something in your car (change a lane, back out of a parking spot, etc) and somebody you didnât previously see warned you off with a honk? I know itâs happened to me at least once, you must live quite the charmed driving life. 
But yes, Iâve seen this happen here in Canada in the past as well - light is red, cars on one side, sidewalk on the other (or cars on both sides, if itâs a three lane road going in one direction) and an emergency vehicle comes up behind with lights and siren blaring. An unsurprisingly large number of people donât know what to do in this situation. Theyâre afraid to run a red light, even if it means getting out of the way of a fire truck. The one time it happened to me, I simply pulled into the intersection enough to let the fire truck past (once I determined it was safe to do so).
The reason being that loading hundreds of comments at a time is a very slow process, presumably. But I wish it was turned off for smaller threads.
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Iâve been honked at before. But the thing is, 90% or more of the time, honking is much too late to be helpful. Most of the time I hear a honk is in gridlock on the freeway, where all I can do is flip the guy the bird, because he can see with his eyeballs that thereâs nowhere for me to go either.
Then thereâs the occasional case were I am honked at as a pedestrian, most often walking through a parking lot, where someone will lay on their horn if I stop for 10 seconds to light a cigarette or something.
Rarely, I am honked at when Iâm at an intersection and the light turns green. I suppose I might have issues noticing important things like the lights changing if I were like most millenials and stared at my phone while driving. But Iâm smart, and I donât want to die, or kill anyone in an awful and avoidable accident, so my phone stays in my pocket on the road, and my eyes are focused on piloting a few thousand pounds of explosion-powered steel and gasoline.
So, no, Iâve never been honked at when it wouldâve made any difference at all. Although I have been honked at plenty of times for doing nothing wrong and when everything is fine.
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