What’s the quickest way to get to the hospital in an emergency? Is your automatic answer to call 999? That may seem like a reasonable suggestion, but does any motorist here care if there is an ambulance behind them with blazing lights and sirens? It doesn’t seem like it – from my observations.
In the UAE, there is actually a legal obligation of drivers to give way to ambulances (check the back of your driver’s license), but whatever the law says and what people do, are obviously disconnected. (Consider the arbitrary speed limits, ubiquitous tailgating, driving with no indicators, passing in the shoulder lane – all surely illegal, but what do I know?). If there is no ambulance priority respect, then why bother with the ambulance at all?
Isn’t it just a reasonable motorist obligation to move out of the way of an ambulance when it is charging to and from the scene? The ambulance’s service is to provide immediate assistance to sick and/or dying patients and to get them to hospital as soon as (reasonably) possible. And so why would you place yourself in a position that inhibits this? What if you or a relative were in that ambulance? If that doesn’t change your perspective, I have to assume that you have been desensitized and are used to this behavior. Or worse, horribly self centered.
Let me assure you that we could offer much better care for these sick folks if we could see them as soon as possible – rather than when they enter into the “spiral of death”. I often see ambulances stuck in traffic, and no one makes any effort to move out of their way. Maybe no one moves because this would require cooperation amongst total strangers. Cooperation and courtesy seems to be a foreign concept amongst some of folks that I have met here.
You say that you want to do something good for this world? Well, sunshine, this could be your moment…and a very small gesture at that. And think, if everyone felt this way, imagine the help we could offer our brothers and sisters in their time of need. A tangible example of the “butterfly effect”.
By Dr DMS
