Safe Speed Forums

I don't agree it's a purely technical offence. What about when someone gets run over because a driver was so focused on letting an ambulance through that they didn't see the pedestrian? What about when another car smashes into the car that has gone through the red light, again because the driver was focused on letting the ambulance through? You can't say that you should only go through the red light if it's safe to do so, because people make mistakes, that's why accidents happen, and if people habitually go through red lights every time an emergency vehicle comes along, mistakes will happen and people will get hurt. It isn't a technical offence, it's a decision to expose yourself and other road users to an increased risk of an accident.

I also find it very hard indeed to think of a situation where it's necessary to go through a red light to let an emergency vehicle through. Most of the time, you can just move sideways a bit, and they can either get between you and oncoming traffic, or if there are several lanes, the lanes can part and they can go down the middle. This is a very good reason to leave yourself some space in front of your vehicle when queuing at traffic lights.


I don't see the relevance of this to the question of whether it is justified to make a personal judgement of the relative merits of two possible courses of action, when legislation has been passed to tell you which course to take. Your statement is also incorrect, for example under the Terrorism Act 2000, there are circumstances where a person is required to prove their innocence rather than being innocent until proven guilty.

Driving Without Due Care & Attention or something?

Er... still DWDCA I'd say.

The point is that when someone goes through a red with the best of intentions but ends up making things worse there are existing sanctions to deal with it. We don't want to have a situation where drivers autmoatically think they must jump the light to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle. We want a situation where they assess whether it's safe to do so, and if it's not bloody well stay put, but if it is they should not be punished for doing so. It's not like there's a strong chance they'll be doing it again in a minute, or perhaps ever again in their lifetime. That IMO makes them quite distinct from reckless red light jumpers and amber gamblers.


See above. If a mistake is made then it probably was not safe, and more to the point the driver should have seen that it was not in fact safe. DWDCA time. I don't think there's any need to worry about people habitually going through red lights for emergency vehciles. In 15 years I've never been put in that situation.


Depends very much on the layout of the junction. Some round here, yes. Others, not a prayer - go through or stay put would be your options, so the sensible thing to do would be to check that nothings coming from the right (including right turners opposite) and move towards the left over the corner.


Absolutely. But so few drivers actually do this I think some more effort needs to go into pointing out the benefits. Does it even get taught by driving schools for example? Mini-me only passed a few months ago, I must ask her.

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I'm inclined to follow a similar line of thought as Stevei. I assume that emergency service drivers receive training on how to safely go through red lights and how to mitigate the risks. 'Civillian' drivers most likely won't have had this training.

I also find it difficult to see why you had to cross right over the junction to let the emergency vehicle past. I would have thought that moving forward a little and pulling over to the side should have been sufficient unless the junction was exceptionally tight for space. The emergency vehicle could possibly also have used the other side of the road (assuming it wasn't hindered by a central reservation).

Maybe lack of vigilance got you into the situation in the first place? The ambulance could have been visible behind you before you even stopped at the lights? I accept that you could have been waiting at the lights before you could see/hear the ambulance but it's another point that should be considerd.

Drivers tend to react in all sorts of odd and unpredictable ways when faced with making room for an emergency vehicle -I've seen folks do some really weird and inexplicable things. Perhaps this is because many actually panic and try to (metaphorically) throw their vehicles out of the way and in so doing make the situation worse.
Put simply, many drivers don't really know how to react, perhaps a TV ad campaign to demonstrate what you should and should not do would help.

Going across to the other side of the lights is a bit iffy. Where possible I'd say go left and if necessary actually turn left even if you don't really want to go that way. This can be done quite safely through a red light if the driver takes sensible precautions and checks for anything coming from the right first. Americans are actually allowed to do this under normal circumstances aren't they? Except of course they turn right on a red rather than left. Hmmm could be a problem in London with all the one way streets, but again, that's something a driver ought to be aware of anyway.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Whilst i appreciate that the law for this particular circumstance is poorly written and would take some time to be altered, exemptions could be incorporated.

eg the law banning the use of hand held mobile phones while driving has the sensible exemption for when calling the emergency services.

Surely it can't be THAT difficult for a similar clause for traffic lights, including that it must be done as safely as possible.

Oh - yes please! Drivers either freeze or bolt when they hear and see us. Basically another COAST issue. Ideally - you should keep calm and just look for safest opportunity to let vehicles pass you - try to create space if you can by slowing/positioning to allow the overtake. If at the lights with no apparent " get out clause" - as appears to be the case here - unless there is a police officer escorting who may give you a specific instruction in tune with the comditions of the situation - stay put. Those lights will change within seconds if they'd been on red for some time. Look for position to allow the pass so that ambulance can get away quickly on the light change - but on no account do you compromise anyone's safety.

Emergency vehicles do NOT have a right to run red lights. They can only do so if on a call, with appropriate signals and they can only proceed if it is safe to do so Thus had the the lane been clear for the ambulance driver - he would still have had to stop for the traffic on the green light and could only have gone if they stopped to allow him to do so. Have had people contininue even when we've been escorting and postioned to warn and aid the ambulance - :scary if you are in middle of junction and some nitwit ignores your blues and twos cos "it's on green innit!"

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Hmmm, indeed. However, Stevei, I suspect a little hypocrisy on your part. Can you honestly, hand on heart, say that you have never knowingly broken a rule or law with no witnesses or evidence to pin the indiscretion on you because you feel it is doing no-one any harm, therefor you have quietly gone about your business rather than turning yourself in to the authorities forthwith?

I've heard it so many times from people who make technical infringements of the law every day with no resulting harm that people shouldn't question their punishment on the occasion they get caught.

I agree - there are many laws I am unhappy with, and would consider it to be possible to break them without causing harm to anyone, indeed many laws are worded so vaguely nowadays that pretty much everyone in the UK could be imprisoned if the powers that be wished to do so. I'm not really a hypocrite, in that a constant theme in my posts is that I want laws to be such that I can act reasonably and have no fear of prosecution. There seem to be two camps:

1. Abide by the law, and if you don't like the law, try to get it changed, e.g. if you want to drive faster on a particular road, this group will want the speed limit to be increased.

2. Have very vague laws, accept commonplace breaking of the letter of the law, and use common sense in deciding when to prosecute. When faced with a desire to drive faster on a particular road, this group will demand that common sense is applied in enforcing the speed limit so that drivers can drive faster.

I'm in group 1, but perhaps the important thing is that both groups agree that they want to be able to drive faster on my hypothetical road I just personally detest overly broad legislation that criminalises legitimate activities, as you have no defence when you end up in court charged with breaking the law, no matter how much you might try to argue that nobody was harmed by your actions.

Interesting. As far as most laws are concerned I'd be in group one as well. However, speed limits are a little different. They can't be more than a guide to what's usually safe in typical conditions, and the inexperienced need the guidance most. For that reason it's not desirable to put them up so high that they represent the maximum safe speed in absolutley ideal conditions. Someone like Mini-me has only a couple of hundred driving miles under her belt and has so much yet to learn, probably far more than she realises yet. For her to be confronted with signs describing the absolute maximum speed in ideal conditions is probably not much good as guidance goes. So we need limits that are more conservative than that, somehting that reflects what's probably to be about right in typical conditions. Vague, I know, but it has to be. If we go for perfect clarity we'll inevitably end up with limits that are either too high for some or too low for others. One answer would be to ditch limits entirely and fall back on the various DWDCA, careless/reckless/dangerous driving type offences. Unfortunately that's not desirable either, since the inexperienced then lose the guidance of limits altogether and the police are left with having to prosecute bad drivers on charges that are considerably harder to prove in court.

The best solution is to have sensible but slightly conservative limits but have discretionary enforcement by trained police. sure, there are concerns that an individual copper may abuse this, but firstly I feel that they're fairly rare these days, and secondly that it's an acceptable risk. That risk could be further reduced by going back to having all police cars two up, which might also reduce the chances of a copper having the s t kicked out of him because he's on his jack. But as a driver I'd feel better about being tugged if there were two coppers, both of whom felt that I needed a talking to about my driving.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The problem I have with this is that it is simply not possible to send one message out which means different things for different groups and for everybody to get correct interpretation! Too many drivers exploit the grey area and speed more than they really should, which brings the law into disrepute, sends the wrong message to inexperienced drivers, raises overall speeds due to pressure from tailgating morons, and has the effect of making people think they have some ‘right’ to break the speed limit. There can be only one message, and one interpretation. Obey the limits, or else!

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Why is it important to obey the limits?

Is there any evidence at all that otherwise responsible folk exceeding the limits cause danger?

And if you're not going to answer those exact questions, please don't bother to reply.

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The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Hold on, lets take a step back here. Not wishing to preach to the converted (well, mostly converted anyway ), but if 'Mr Prosecuted for jumping a red to make way for an ambulance' hadn't been snapped by a camera, but instead there'd been a trafpol sat at the junction then what? I hear what you're saying In Gear, and I realise that we're not actually OBLIGED to move for a vehicle attending an emergency, but be honest, given the situation (assuming that he didn't ACTUALLY cause further risk to anyone around him) would you have booked him?

Stevei, your argument about terrorism is totally flawed. What we're talking about here is allowing the CPS/Magistrates to excersise discression and (hopefully) a little bit of common sence. The whole point about sitting before a magistrate is that said magistrate is SUPPOSED to be a respected and trusted member of society who is capable of making impartial decisions for the benifit of society. I find it very hard to believe that putting 3 points on someones licence and branding them an unsafe driver simply for trying to help could be of any benifit to anyone. There's no way any sane person could ever justify murdering people to further a cause, so common sence would still outlaw terrorism...

Gatso - very interesting point. Speed limits ought to be a guide, and only used to assist a prosicution for DWDCA, how about that?

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Come on, that's a little far fetched isn't it? Not really fair to draw a comparison between someone moving out of the way of a ambulance on an emergancy call and suicide bombers. Even if(and I'm not sure I agree) the guy did the wrong thing, should he really have been punished? At the very most he should have a lecture from a trained police officer and told of the correct procedure of dealing with that situation. Oh but I forgot cameras can't do that can they? The benefits of that would be that the guy in question knew not to do it again, he wouldn't have felt resentful and he would know the correct procedure.

Skipping red lights for your own gain and moving out of the way of an emergency vehicle should not be confused in this manner.

Most British laws do not operate on a strict liability basis. The law sets out a description of an offence in general terms and it is left to the courts to decide whether the circumstances fit that particular offence. The law does not define precisely what is and is not illegal. For example, if you enter someone else's house and remove their property without asking their permission, there are plenty of circumstances under which it would not be classed as theft.

However, speed limits, red lights, and similar laws operate on the basis of "strict liability", i.e. if you have contravened the law (the provisions of which are clearly defined) then you have committed an offence regardless of the circumstances. But even with laws of this type the authorities exercise discretion about when it is appropriate to bring prosecutions, and there are exemptions which are defined in law - for example, it can be a valid defence to a drink-driving charge to demonstrate that you were responding to a medical emergency. (We have debated before whether strict liability laws are appropriate for motoring offences, which is a different issue)

The courts also have the power to give an offender an absolute discharge even if found guilty, which might have been appropriate in the case of the guy in Doncaster - althoug most people would say the case should not have been brought in the first place.

If you look into it you will find plenty of cases where prosecutions for speeding and similar offences have been withdrawn because the authorities decided they were unreasonable - one was reported on here recently about a guy taking his sick (or maybe pregnant) wife to hospital.


There are plenty of "catch-all" offences in law that can be used in a variety of circumstances that are not strictly defined, such as Threatening Behaviour, Causing a Breach of the Peace, and of course Careless and Dangerous Driving. The definitions of these adopted by the courts are likely to change over the years. But there does need to be a general presumption that a particular category of behaviour, broadly defined, should be considered illegal - you can't have the courts simply declaring specific acts illegal on a whim.

I suppose in theory you could have a general offence of "acting in an environmentally unfriendly manner", but in practice it would be a complete can of worms. Something like that (if desirable) would be much better dealt with by specific regulations covering vehicle characteristics.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I agree, this is a perfectly valid concern. The only solution I can think of is to have two speeds on each sign - the legal limit, and an advisory "normal" speed. The more I think about it, though, the more I am in favour of trying to eliminate differentials on roads where overtaking is undesirable, i.e. built up areas with lots of side roads, whilst being happy to have differentials on multi-lane roads where people can safely go past slower vehicles. I do think that tailgating of slower drivers on roads where faster drivers can't overtake is a major problem, and the only solution I can see is to force the faster drivers to slow down to the speed of the slower drivers so they can't exert this pressure on the slower drivers to speed up. Or perhaps cameras that are triggered when a car is too close to the car in front, rather than by speed - I think they have these in some countries?

The sort of people wanted by the authorities in our prisons????

Well, they let murders out if they're good boys. Sex offenders generally get out to be 'rehabilitated' too, as do burglars, those who mug OAPs for their pensions and other people who resort to violence first to intimidate others and get their own way. They also don't lock up enough football hooligans for long enough who blight our national game .

They certainly don't want the sort of scroates who have NEVER had a driving licence or any insurance - because these sorts of people come up before the beak on a regular basis.

No, the determining factor is actually CASH. If you have money (and let's face it, the fellow with the Land Rover must have had a few bob) THEN that sort of indivdual is ripe for enforcement.

The truth is this is the sort of bloke whose upbringing and circle of friends generally would mean he'd never been up before the beak for anything else ever in any case so he's likely to be a 'bit scared' and show them some respect and subsequently quiver as they deliberate with what they'll do with him, etc... He also has a thick wallet with lots of juicy cash and well stocked with credit cards.

This sort of bloke will pay handsomely: If they don't, then it's bailiff time - or worse.

Whereas, the drugged up junkie who doesn't give 2 monkies fucks about anyone else except number 1 in any case, tells the beak to "fuck off" on appearing and laughs at him, knowing full well there's really not a lot they can actually do. These low-life numpties who have nothing for the State to steal from them are then turfed back onto the rest of us to be 'tolerated' and 'rehabilitated'.

Oh how we need more pink pigs!

If it's pink, has lots of tits, a curly stubbly tail, grunts and oinks - it probably is a pig - it's about time we started identifying them so rather than prat around any more

Can someone explain how imposing a financial penalty and adding points to a licence effectively deals with someone who thought that under the circumstances they were doing the right thing.

Is this not a case, as with many other similar offences, that driver education would be more appropriate. A reasonable open minded driver would go away having learnt something and hopefully be a better all round driver even if the course had only lasted half a day.

Education, a better option than punishment? Discuss

As someone pointed out before, you did do your longbow practice this Sunday didn't you?

But what is an education course going to teach him? 'Don't move out of the way of ambulances'?