Boston rant #1

Here's something appalling I've noticed about Boston drivers:

They don't get out of the way for ambulances!

Now I am well aware that Boston, along with Miami, consistently ranks at the top of the list of American cities for rude driving. Having lived and driven in both, I can vouch for the truth of those surveys. And for run-of-the-mill jackass behavior (for example cutting people off, refusing to yield for others entering highways or changing lanes, last second merging, obscene gestures, and aggressive horn honking), I find them roughly equal in rudeness. It's just a bit more dangerous here since the streets have fewer and narrower lanes.

But even in Miami people usually pull over and stop at the sound of a siren approaching. Not so in Boston. It seems they are more concerned with losing their place in traffic than with the lives of the patients being transported. I had never heard the sound of an ambulance's horn before moving here.

I live in the Fens and work in the Longwood Medical Area, so I see or hear ambulances every day. On numerous occasions I have witnessed ambulances struggling to get through lines of cars whose drivers simply refuse to yield. The ambulance usually ends up driving against traffic on the other side of the road so that approaching drivers are forced to yield or get smashed head-on. When this isn't possible, it makes no difference to the drivers in front of the ambulance. Several times I've witnessed people holding their ground in the middle of the street until the ambulance was inches from their rear bumper! And it wasn't that there was no room to move; I've seen this happen on relatively wide streets with plenty of space to pull over. Apparently it's just too much of an inconvenience.

A few days ago I had to tap my horn to get the car ahead of me to move up a tiny bit to allow room for me to pull over. In a group of around 30 cars, I was one of only 5 or 6 to even budge an inch, though the siren was blaring for at least two minutes as the crew attempted to get though all the cretins who sat there in the way.

This is absolutely disgusting. God knows how many medical emergencies turn out worse than they should have.