An emergency vehicle was struck by an Audi A6 at an intersection in Estonia recently, with neither driver displaying what we would call extreme caution.
It seems that the driver of the Audi might have had his vision impaired by the sun, which is why he failed to notice the emergency vehicle until it was way too late to do anything about it. At the same time, he probably shouldn’t have been going that fast.
Technically though, it’s the responsibility of the emergency responder to slow down at an intersection and make sure that it’s clear to cross, since not all civilian drivers have the reflexes of a Lewis Hamilton or the awareness of a Ken Block, generally speaking.
But again, we’re not letting the Audi driver off the hook that easily, because even with a green light, he probably should have been more alert to the situation and not stomp on the throttle right before entering the intersection.
Based on the dashcam readings, the emergency vehicle was doing about 40 km/h (24.8 mph) when it was hit by the Audi, with the latter definitely sustaining the most damage – because physics. Ultimately though, we just hope nobody was injured and that important lessons were learned.