- cross-posted to:
- lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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And people complain that climate protestors hold up ambulances, even though they always let emergency vehicles through.
The german guy is playing it up for views but i do agree that’s pretty bad. In Australia we have similar laws - you must move aside for emergency vehicles, penalty is a fine and demerit points on your license.
And in practice it is unusual for cars not to move - usually someone elderly/distracted that didn’t see or hear them and probably should get a driving retest. The ambulance will squelch their siren / blast their horns as a reminder for people slow to move, but in my 20 odd years of city driving I have never seen an ambulance stuck like in OPs video - and yes, every major city gets traffic just as heavy as that with lanes just as wide.
This is a video of an ambulance running through fairly heavy traffic in Sydney that shows how rarely they get blockaded by traffic and how most drivers try to do the right thing. Low res unfortunately, but it is 11 years old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsplO_2l4hE
Park near a fire hydrant or pass a stopped school bus and everybody freaks out, but this is just fine somehow
In NYC people block hydrants all the fucking time. Only time it’s enforced is when there’s a fire, by FDNY
Not to defend our shitty car-centric society but most places in the US aren’t so bad. I would guess that New York in particular presents more challenges for smooth ambulance traffic than almost anywhere else in the country due to its high traffic density and relatively narrow roads and streets. People likely want to move and can’t. Excluding bicycle issues, Americans are pretty good about observing traffic laws and knowing when to give way. (but yes, to a German person, American drivers probably seem like troglodytes)
That’s fair, but this issue is solved in European cities, via mass transit lowering the number of cars on the road, ambulances being built smaller to fit down narrow passages, and wide bike lanes which ambulances use in emergencies. If anything, NY might be one of the cities most poised to implement all these, if it can just get its shit together.
I live in East Asia, where public transport is given major funding and has high ridership. There is no law requiring people to move their cars for an ambulance and people just don’t bother. Ambulances routinely get stuck in traffic.
I believe this video is from before the congestion pricing in NYC. I wonder if and how much it has improved since.
I’m in Manhattan this week, and have watched an ambulance slowly move down a street as cars struggled to get out of the way. Even with congestion pricing, there just isn’t much room on the narrow one-way streets.
I’ve lived in many European cities with narrow-streets. Somehow ambulances don’t struggle too much.
Not sure what to tell you, only reporting what I’ve seen. On the avenues they’re fine, it’s just the east-west streets in midtown I’ve seen them struggle with.
Does congestion pricing cause people to give way to ambulances? 🤣
What are you on about? Congestion pricing reduces congestion, which makes ambulances go faster.
Yeah true, there’s fewer people on the road means fewer will not know how to drive, as people who don’t know how to drive tend to not like driving so might be more motivated to avoid it by the charge. Or it’s just a tax on people who are too poor to be able to turn down a job that requires them to drive…
The ambulance will still get stuck behind people who don’t know how to drive…
Congestion pricing impacts rich people more than poor people. You can drive to New York, park outside of the center and take the metro or the bus. Poor people have been doing that for a long time in New York because it’s expensive to park in the city. What jobs in the middle of New York city require you to drive?
Not only that, in many places there are dedicated bus, and taxi (and sometimes tram) lanes which can also be used by emergency services.
Haha I like what you did there at the end
Yep. Traffic gets the hell out of the way and stops immediately if there are emergency vehicles trying to get through where I live, even in the city.
Not to defend our shitty car-centric society but most places in the US aren’t so bad.
+1. I’ve never seen this problem in Chicago. Most people pull over and stop until the ambulance has passed.
For anyone wondering, the Rettungsgasse (“rescue aisle”) is something we do on longer stretches of road whenever congestion happens, to allow ambulances to pass through as quickly as possible. Everyone on the right side of the road keeps to the right and everyone on the left keeps to the left, forming a roughly ambulance-sized gap in the middle. On multi-lane roads, it’s formed to the right of the left-most lane.
There’s also laws for it. You can get fined, if you hold up the ambulance, because you failed to form the Rettungsgasse, or if you have the audacity to drive down the Rettungsgasse to try to skip a traffic jam.
It’s not really a thing in cities like shown in the video, as we’d typically try to drive into side roads or onto parking spaces or the sidewalk to make room for the ambulance. The laws don’t apply there either.
This is the law in both America and Canada, the issue is either just assholes deciding they are more important than the ambulance ,or a lack of places to move.
And also we just let people die instead of enforcing the rules.
Fuck drivers
Most of province 20 over the limit seems fine and you got a really mean cop if you got a ticket for it, even though we know speed, tailgating, agressive passing all increases the risk for a collision that tax payers ultimately pay for.
The ambulance should havet the right to trash the cars of they don’t move out of the way. That would maybe get people to move.
Put a giant cowcatcher in front of it
While that sounds nice, it also risks the ambulance being rendered immobile, or the equipment/patients being thrown around.
Maybe not ramming them at full speed. But just enough to put a dent in their car.
Okay. Now we have a damaged ambulance and a damaged car, but the ambulance still can’t pass. What’s the advantage?
Dieser Kommentarbereich ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
… ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ja
So viel Zeit muss sein
That’s why nobody drives in New York. Too much traffic.
This seems paradoxical…
They’re paraphrasing a Yogi Berra joke.
I knew it from Futurama, but you learn something new every day!
Futurama is so dense with cultural references it gives me vertigo. Truly great show.
Audio: Whoever needed it, they’re dead.
Subtitle: Whoever needed it, they’re okay.I looked it up, and the Rettungsgasse isn’t a thing in Germany on city streets, only on highways (Autobahnen) and roads between settlements (Außerortsstraßen). (TIL it’s a thing in Germany on roads between settlements because here in Austria it is only a thing on highways.)
There’s still an obligation to move out of the way for emergency vehicles, but there are situations where that simply isn’t possible. There are sometimes dense urban traffic situations similar to the one in the video in Germany too.
Living in Germany, I beg to differ.
In the situation shown every vehicle would have to move somewhere to let the ambulance pass.
Even if that means sidewalks or crossing red lights. Had to do so myself on occasion.
You simply move out of the way. Nothing more to it.
I’ve never seen a siren stuck in traffic in my life here in Belgium
Same here. I’m German. I mean, yeah, maybe for a few seconds or something. Until people fucking moved out of the way.
Same in Sweden.
Neither have I in America.
Ok boomer
This is because Americans are garbage people
Wowowow
Of course the ambulance have a reinforced bumper. I think the cars would move out of the way if it means that your gets damaged of you don’t
Ah, so it is because of bikes! /s
Easy Douggie!!
Yeah those pesky cyclist blocking the road ahead!
Now I want a kinky bicycle. I just have a straight one.
Kinky and straight aren’t mutual exclusive 😏
Tape a dildo to the seat, now you have one too
NYC needs to ban cars
No cars on the island at least
New York City already decided it is ok for let people get murdered in plain daylight for no reason, there is an immense, mountain moving amount of wealth in NYC and yet there is destitute homeless everywhere on the streets struggling to survive.
The fact that wealthy people who live in NYC aren’t ashamed that they live in one of the most powerful cities on earth and yet it still fails to take care of its poorest citizens in an even remotely humane way tells you everything you need to know about who has control of NYC.
This is just an another expression of it.
This is a bunch of BS. Have you ever even been to the city?
yes, ok, I edited my post, I am not saying everyone living in NYC is trash, I am not trying to dunk on the people, ughh I did this recently with LA lol, I am talking about the city, not the people living in the city, the city and its politics and the limitations imposed by the rich on what can and can’t happen and how much useless delaying action the rich can deploy to forestall what the majority of a clearly pretty vibrant place desires.
All this being said, to a degree yes I am insulting NYC for becoming more conservative in a lot of ways over the last couple of years (I will absolutely shit on NYC for all of the neoliberal fearmongering around the subway being full of crime and pouring funding into policing people for not paying $0.73 fares, yes, it is embarrassing and NYC should be embarassed), of course you can’t make any great generalizations about 10 million people, but it is a trend in east coast/northeast culture I have observed and yes I do think NYC typifies it while still wanting to pretend it is the liberal center of the free world.
shrugs
I have been to NYC many times, I know a decent amount of people that live there and will always consider it home. There is a reason I don’t visit more lol, besides the fact that I always go broke (even though the food is awesome no doubt).
