Stay on the roadway
Do you want to take the emergency lane when traffic is stationary because it won’t continue anyway? Don’t do it, warns the police. On the A4 this led to delays for emergency services on their way to an accident on Wednesday morning.
The A4 from The Hague to Amsterdam was closed on Wednesday morning between the Prins Clausplein and Zoeterwoude-Dorp interchange due to an accident, the ANWB reported. Apparently it was reason for various traffic jam drivers to park on the emergency lane, because there was no movement left. But that is absolutely not the intention, because that had direct consequences for the handling of the accident. “Because there are many vehicles on the hard shoulder due to the closure, emergency vehicles cannot pass,” the police tweeted.
A police spokesperson does not know why people have stood on the hard shoulder. “Perhaps because they are behind a red cross, and therefore cannot continue, they thought: we are going to stand on the hard shoulder?”. But that is not allowed, the spokesperson emphasizes. “Abusing the hard shoulder is punishable. You can get a high fine for this. In addition, you delay the assistance that possible victims desperately need.” You can easily count on a fine of between €300 and €400 for unnecessarily using the emergency lane or not giving priority to emergency services. If you get a verbal for both facts, then it all adds up.
Incidentally, in this case it was an accident that could be dealt with fairly quickly once the emergency services were on site. The spokesman does not know how much delay the emergency workers incurred exactly. Fortunately, the victims also appeared to have minor injuries, he says. “That is certainly a blessing in disguise. You don’t want to imagine what would have happened if we really had to be on site quickly. Which does not mean that it was not also annoying for these victims that they could not be quickly assisted.”
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl