Who Gets Right-of-Way — and How to Give It

The official, complete list. You are required to give right-of-way to:

• Police cars
• Emergency vehicles — fire engines and ambulances — when sounding a siren or showing flashing lights
• The presidential motorcade
• Anyone the situation calls for — specifically, when directed by a police officer or a traffic marshal, regardless of what signs or lights say at that moment

That last point is easy to underestimate: a traffic marshal doesn't have to be a police officer to have the authority to direct you, and their instruction still overrides the default rules.

Knowing the list is half the skill. The other half is what "give way" physically means when a siren is closing behind you:

1. React to the siren, not the vehicle. Begin making way as soon as you're aware of an approaching siren — don't wait to identify which service it is. Every vehicle on the list gets the same response.
2. Ease off and indicate left — don't brake hard. A sudden stop in the traffic stream creates the obstacle you're trying to remove. Signal so the driver behind and the emergency crew can both read your intention.
3. Move left and clear a path, pulling as far to the left as is safe. On a multi-lane road, traffic parts toward the edges of its lanes to open the middle.
4. Never stop inside a junction to yield. Clear the junction first, then pull aside — a car stopped in the middle of a junction blocks exactly the path the emergency vehicle needs.
5. A red light is still a red light. Don't drive through it to clear a path; position within the space you legally have. If an officer is present and waves you through, that instruction — top of the precedence order — makes it lawful.
6. Don't follow the gap. Once the vehicle passes, resume normally. Tailing an ambulance through the opening it creates is dangerous and defeats the point — the gap closes behind it, onto you.