VIDEO: Fire Truck Struggles to Clear Congested Traffic

Malaysian drivers are known to be a selfish and impatient lot. To their credit, most people are still mindful enough to give way to emergency vehicles such as ambulances and firetrucks, but because most of us have the habit of squeezing our vehicles through every inch of available space, we are sometimes face with the situation of not being able to give way even if we want to!

Such was the quandary that faced the firemen in this video shared by our Fire & Rescue Department’s official Facebook page showing a fire truck with sirens blaring struggling to find a way past congested traffic to attend the emergency which it was summoned to handle.

Chief culprits of the situation in the video were none other than folks who tried to beat traffic using the emergency lanes – meaning there was no space even for well-meaning drivers to make way for the poor fire truck!

Queue cutting and emergency lane violation are two very common bad practices by many Malaysian drivers who seek to gain an advantage over other road users in congested traffic. Besides being rude to others on the road, these drivers fail to realize the knock on effect they create further upstream of traffic due to the bottlenecking that they create.  

Lives of other people are often on the line whenever emergency vehicles are called to action, and time is often the essence in these situations. By not getting out of the way quickly enough the next time an ambulance or fire truck screams through, you could well be responsible for preventing timely help from reaching someone in need. Think about that.