Although most drivers instinctively slow down when they see the bright flashing lights of emergency vehicles, some do not, and some even react like moths around a flame. “Moth effect” is the term coined for the surprisingly high number of incidents in which motorists crash into parked emergency vehicles illuminated by their flashing lights. Theories for this effect focus on the human instinct to look towards light, and the tendency to steer in the direction on which attention is fixated. A simpler explanation is that motorists misinterpret what they are seeing, assuming the emergency vehicle is moving and not parked.

 

Speed is a critical risk factor when vehicles hit pedestrians. As Jitka Rokytova and Michal Sklenar put it in Analysis of Road Accidents on Pedestrian Crossings Caused by Speeding, “accidents with high speed are always catastrophic for pedestrians…Statistics show that 50km/h (31mph) is the limiting speed where a pedestrian can still survive a crash with a vehicle”.

 

Efforts to protect emergency personnel at the roadside include so-called “slow down, move over” laws first enacted in Canada in Saskatchewan in 2001, followed by Ontario in 2003.  Effective June 1st, 2009, BC will become the sixth province (after also PEI, Manitoba and Alberta) to have such a law. Forty US states have similar laws. The BC Motor Vehicle Act Regulations have been amended by the addition of Division 47 requiring drivers to slow to prescribed maximum speeds when approaching, from either direction, a stopped emergency vehicle with its lights flashing on or beside an undivided highway.

 

On roads posted at 80 km/h and above, drivers must slow to 70 km/h; on those posted below 80 km/h, to 40 km/h. If the highway is divided—by a concrete median, for example—vehicles traveling in the opposite direction are not required to slow. Also, drivers traveling in a lane beside a stopped emergency vehicle must move into another lane to pass if it is safe to do so and a police officer has not directed them to do otherwise. The requirements apply to drivers passing police, fire, ambulance and towing vehicles, as well as vehicles used by commercial vehicle safety and enforcement personnel, passenger vehicle inspectors, conservation officers, park rangers, and special provincial constables employed in the Ministry of Forests and Range.

 

The penalty for not slowing to the designated speed, not moving over if it is safe to do so, or both, is a fine and three penalty points. The fine, including a 15 per cent victim surcharge, is $148 if paid within 30 days or $173 thereafter. The existing penalty remains for failing to yield to a moving emergency vehicle.