The Gauntlet: A Sequel
One thing I’ve witnessed here in Las Vegas way too often is emergency vehicles getting gauntleted at intersections. It should be a reality show, except that real lives are on the line. Wait. That actually makes it better. Hunger Games, the sequel (Behind the Wheel).
If you live here, or visit here often, you see and you know. Updated movie title: The Gauntlet II.
Busy intersection. Siren blaring. Confused drivers rubbernecking. Cars in left lane parked at a complete stop. Car in right lane blasts through the intersection at 60 mph with rap drum beat blasting and vape smoke whisking out the window. Motorcycle lane splitting. And of course, there’s always the “homeless veteran” with the “God Bless” sign parked at every intersection who makes more taxfree money panhandling than the director of the Caesars Palace sportsbook.
Sidebar—-oh yes, the worst drivers in all of America are in Florida (I once saw three accidents in five minutes, and witnessed two of them happening in Ft. Lauderdale — read that report HERE), but at least those NY-transplant fossils are all driving 15 mph while sucking oxygen tanks and don’t kill anyone except their insurance agents from exhaustion. Here in Las Vegas where the city never sleeps (except at intersections, perhaps), half the population drives 35 and the other half drives whatever the speed limit is — plus 30. If it’s a motorcycle, then — plus 50. In Las Vegas, speed limits aren’t laws. They’re billboards of comedy. Move the fuck over, Brad Garrett.
We are a city of constant distractions. Drinking. Gambling. Drugs. Watching emergency vehicles maneuver the latticework of inebriated boulevards and busy intersections is better than any bullshit F1 race — and it’s free! Most occasions, you see EMT crews basically saying “fuck it,” and lane jumping to the other side of the road in an effort to get through the car barricade. Unfortunately, most drivers here burrow themselves inside of their cars and might as well have racehorse blinders on after drinking a bottle of vodka. The only shot they have of hearing a siren is blowing out a speaker.
A few days ago, I was sitting at Desert Inn and Jones (they know me by name at that Baskin-Robbins). EMT vehicle roars up to a gauntlet of cars. NO ONE FUCKING MOVES. The ambulance blasts the horn repeatedly, but the three cars in front apparently are parked and might as well be watching a drive-in movie. Move, you motherfuckers! Total freakin’ oblivion. Hoooooooonk! Hoooooooonk! Hoooooooonk! Hoooooooonk!
No movement. Nothing.
These clowns are dirt-dumb dimwits, but hey — there’s a great potential marketing possibility for the new Pioneer Stereos XM1 system in this deadly debacle. That $1200 stereo system in your $600 car rocks, dude! Meanwhile. a grossly underpaid, on-the-job-trained EMT crew swerves into the direction of opposite-flowing traffic (risking another dozen lives) and then crushes the breaks and crawls through the intersection inching ahead at 5 mph because there’s always the very real DANGER of the right-lane superspeeder, the motocross moron (O/U on dying on the bike in Las Vegas, about even), and out of nowhere the intoxicated vape-addict ready to t-bone the gurny who was just feeling a little chest pain. Wham! How’s your chest pain now, Herbert
F1 drivers — suck off and get lost and don’ come back. I’ll take whoever is behind the wheel of an EMT vehicle in Las Vegas any day.
