On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:22:44 -0500, "John Harlow"
> wrote:

>Scenario: you're waiting # 1 at a red light, middle lane, other lanes
>blocked. Emerg vehicle pulls up behind, lights flashing.
>
>Is it legal for you to run the red to allow the EV to pass?
>

This happened to me a couple weeks ago. I was stopped at a red light
in the right lane. Another car was stopped in the left lane next to
me, so there was no clear path for the fire truck. I saw a fire truck
approaching from behind me, fast, with lights & sirens blaring. It
was pretty obvious he was not intending to stop (actually he looked to
be moving so fast I feared he could not stop if I failed to move).
Fortunately the road I was intersecting with was one-way, so a quick
look revealed no traffic coming from that direction. There were some
left-turners in the oncoming lane, who had a green light to turn in
front of me, but they wisely stopped and gave me and the fire truck
enough room to pull through the intersection. Anyway, it all happened
quite fast, and caused me no small anxiety. In hindsight it would
have been smarter for me to turn right instead of going straight
through the intersection, but that would have added miles to my trip,
and I didn't think of it until it was over.

I think most emergency vehicles here are equipped with strobe devices
to trip the lights, but in this case it didn't seem to happen.