Sickening crunch

I was just coming back from lunch at the little cafe in Winchester where Naomi and I often eat lunch (today, it was just me, as N was at a meeting) a few minutes ago, when an ambulance came hurtling up the hill of St George's Street with lights and sirens going. The problem is that St George's St is part of the one-way system, and when the ambulance reached the point next to Barclay's Bank, the cars were backed-up from the next set of traffic lights in two lanes.

So the ambulance driver decided that she could pass a Passat in front of her even though there was nowhere for the Passat to go, and there's a central reservation between lanes. She started blowing the ambulance horn, the Passat inched forward even though there wasn't really much further to go, and then she tried to go around it. Remember to picture the central reservation and the backed-up traffic. The ambulance impacted with the side of the Passat with the most hideous sound of tortured metal and plastic. Then the ambulance driver had to pull over so that she could share insurance details with the now-furious family in the car.

I'm left wondering about the fate of the injured person on the way to hospital - there was only one paramedic in the front of the ambulance, driving, so somebody must have been in the back with the patient.

Spare a thought.