Police in Lynchburg, Virginia (VA), have charged the driver of an ambulance with causing a fatal collision at the intersection of Campbell Avenue and Florida Avenue on May 3, 2012. Reports of the deadly crash do not indicate whether the emergency vehicle had its warning lights and sirens going, but eyewitnesses said the ambulance slowed only slightly before going through a red light and hitting the pickup.
The impact caused the truck to flip onto its roof, and the ambulance wound up on top of the other vehicle. In addition to causing the pickup rollover and death, the accident caused minor injuries to the ambulance driver, two medical personnel in the ambulance and a patient being transported to a nearby hospital.
Emergency vehicles like ambulances, fire trucks and police cruisers have right of way at all intersections when they have their sirens going. Still, emergency responders must proceed through red lights and stops signs with caution to avoid tragic accidents like the one in Lynchburg. A 2011 Virginia law passed in the wake of a fatal collision between a police car and a civilian vehicle in Fairfax County underlined these rules of the road.
As Virginia wrongful death attorneys, we have handled too many cases in which people lost their lives because other drivers ignored stop signals. While emergency responders can — sometimes must — go through red lights, they have a high duty to do so responsibly and in a way that does not endanger anyone else on the road.
EJL