"This is all well and good, until it's your life hanging in the balance waiting on an emergency vehicle."

Precisely my point. I'm willing to invest some of my time and energy trying to take care of the people who do want to have emergency vehicles come to their rescue even when the streets aren't all pristine.

And I imagine that the city, with it's lust for big machines, would actually love to have some real ATV type emergency vehicles like they do in places like Vermont.