Siren Songs Unheard

Sometimes, from that nail-biting vantage point behind the wheel of his ambulance, Ken Ainsworth feels as though he is in the middle of some wacky new video game, lost in a cartoonish world of mindlessly selfish drivers.

But this is no game. On this weekday morning, Ainsworth guides his ambulance west along Santa Monica Boulevard, responding to a call on a possible heart attack. He sounds his siren at each intersection, blasting those deafening electronic yelps--the unmistakable call of the emergency medical vehicle.

Still, the ride is wild. The cars come out of nowhere, each an accident waiting to happen.

Right in front of him, a cement truck hurls across the intersection at 15th Street, causing him to hit his brakes. Incredibly, a late-model BMW tries to pass him on the left, heedless to his repeated warnings, before veering off.

Ahead, a station wagon in the left lane stops cold, as though throwing down a roadblock. Just beyond, another vehicle--a mini-van driven by a woman with toddlers in tow--speeds up to beat him across an intersection.

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“It’s such a simple thing--you see an ambulance, you pull over to the right as soon as you can and just get out of the way,” Ainsworth says. “But for too many people, ambulances are just an annoyance, something that delays their plans to get where they’re going, if only for a minute.

“The way most people see it, it’s not their emergency.”

When Times reporter Gene Sherman profiled a series of experts about the flaws of Southern California drivers in 1946, veteran ambulance driver Jimmy O’Neill lamented that most motorists just didn’t seem to care about his job.

“People pay no attention to sirens, not thinking that the siren is a signal of misery and pain somewhere. An ambulance driver isn’t just going home to put on his slippers. He’s got an important objective.

“What people are supposed to do--by law--is pull over as far to the right as they can and stop. But not in L.A.! They just keep going, or get rattled and stop in the middle of the street. Half the drivers in this town don’t know what a siren is, to begin with.

“And they don’t know that sometimes a minute’s delay because an ambulance must stop or let someone turn may mean the life of the patient.”

Listening to those old sentiments, Carol Stenning nods her head in agreement. Like Ainsworth, she’s an emergency medical technician for American Medical Response, the nation’s largest private ambulance provider, with more than 400 ambulances in Southern California.

About six and eight times each shift, she rushes out on calls, guiding her ambulance through urban traffic where drivers ignore her siren, often making her feel invisible. She could be Jimmy O’Neill.

“That describes exactly how I feel,” she said. “It hasn’t changed one bit. If anything, the situation has gotten worse. There are more drivers today, more impatient people on the road.”

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Ambulances are no longer the old “meat wagons” used to merely transport ravaged bodies for treatment. Many are roving hospitals with advanced lifesaving equipment and computers, driven by trained paramedics whose response times are closely monitored.

That singular siren has evolved into a symphony of supposedly stern street warnings--from electronic wails and yelps to whoops, squawks, groans and screams.

Other vehicles have changed as well. Many cars are so well-insulated that drivers cannot discern street racket--ambulance sirens included--when their windows are closed, especially with the air conditioning or radio on.

And often, on wide streets such as Wilshire or Olympic boulevards, the siren’s sound is flattened out and inaudible, unable to resonate off tall buildings like it does on downtown streets.

“I really can’t blame the people who can’t hear me,” said Donna Stone, a 10-year veteran and American Medical Response supervisor. “It’s the ones who really don’t care that get under my skin, the ones who think ‘I have to get to my meeting so I’m not going to pull over for you.’ ”

The worst offenders, she says, are taxi and bus drivers who seem to assume that they have some God-given right of way.

As for everyday motorists: “The more expensive the car in question, the less courtesy you’re going to get.”

By law, ambulance drivers must halt momentarily at all stop signs and red lights. Most drivers will pick their way through heavy traffic, observing who stops for them before easing their way through gridlock.

Still, Carol Stenning can’t believe the response her siren elicits.

“I’ve had drivers flip me off,” she says. “People will throw up their hands like I’m the one who’s in their way. Sometimes, I say under my breath: ‘Listen buddy, you better hope that this isn’t your grandmother in here.’ But you know what? Someday, it’s going to be a relative of theirs. Or maybe even them.”

Los Angeles police say the chances of being stopped for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle are slim. But those motorists who do get pulled over won’t like the results: The fine for a first offense is $271--or $405 for a second offense within two years.

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Police and ambulance drivers agree that more education is needed. “Like missing children, do you put reminders on billboards or cartons of milk?” asked Officer Gordon Smith of the LAPD’s traffic coordination section. “The word needs to go out with young drivers in high school and on state driving tests.”

Ainsworth, a 29-year-old Van Nuys resident, has seen only two motorists ticketed for their refusal to get out of his way during his seven years of ambulance driving.

But even this quiet veteran has lost his patience. Like the night a guy in a new BMW not only failed to yield, but decided to beat traffic by tailing Ainsworth’s ambulance through several red lights and blocked intersections.

“He stayed right behind me and went through at least two lights that way. Then he tried to pass me,” he said of the driver, who was later ticketed after Ainsworth pointed him out to police. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Ainsworth asks you to do him a favor: Keep your windows cracked just a bit when you drive. That way, you’ll hear the ambulance siren and know when to pull over.

Then, as he carries his next precious human cargo, he’ll say only nice things about you when he eases past you on the street.

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To read the stories from Gene Sherman’s 1946 series on The Times’ Web site, go to:

https://www.latimes.com/driving