Local drivers mostly fail to give way to ambulances

Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 16

Local drivers’ insensitivity towards patients being transported to hospitals in ambulances can be gauged from the fact that they are not bothered to let the ambulances pass on an emergency basis.

In a recent instance on Monday, a youth forced an ambulance to wait for almost 15 minutes, as he argued with the ambulance driver that his car was hit from behind by him. At the time, the ambulance was shifting two children to a private hospital. It was only after passersby intervened that the car gave way.

This is not a stray incident in which drivers on city roads do not consider giving passage to ambulances. Such scenes can be seen frequently in the city, as drivers seem to ignore ambulances’ distress alarm.

Most of us know that each passing minute is crucial to save a life because delay in transporting the patient to a hospital could prove fatal . A local resident, Joginder Nath, said, “We people do not care for others’ lives. It is everybody’s duty to let the ambulance pass first so that a patient could be transported to hospital in time.”

Residents stated that traffic cops could help in sensitising people by arranging the passage on priority for the ambulances by asking others to stop. Medical experts say that many people fail to survive a serious traffic accident just because there was a delay in medical help.

An ambulance driver with 108 ambulance said, “Sometimes we come across drivers who stop their cars on the roadside and let an ambulance pass.” 

“Family members accompanying the patient in ambulances are always bless such people. But, sometimes, it is frustrating when local drivers pay no heed,” he said, adding that they felt the pain of a patient dying on the way to hospital just because there were traffic jams.

Another local resident, Kewal Singh, said, “Every driver ahead of an ambulance should give it a thought if he or she would drive the same way in case anyone from their family was being shifted to hospital in that ambulance. If we start thinking this way, the problem would automatically end.”