- cross-posted to:
- lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
There are many things to criticize the US for, but this guy is just an asshole. There is literally nowhere for those drivers to move aside to.
Yes there is: lots of gaps and the sidewalk is also available. The outer vehicles can move to the sidewalk and make way for the inner vehicles. There was plenty of space to shuffle vehicles around. Plenty!
You think there is no traffic congestions on German streets?
Besides, in Germany we form a gap in advance before we even hear an ambulance. An ambulacen can usually rush through a traffic jam at speeds of like 50kmh or more.
It’s beyond me why this isn’t a thing everywhere.
In most places in the US that’s exactly what we do. Literally the only place I’ve seen this is on the single-lane east-west streets in midtown Manhattan. I’m sure it happens elsewhere in Manhattan, because the streets are narrow as hell and there are far too many cars. (Which is insane to me, if I lived here I’d never drive.)
In my experience this, and running red lights, is more of an American phenomena than one inherent to cars
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.
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?
Knowing how to drive doesn’t create a space to move your vehicle into when the road is packed like Tetris. The world’s best drivers can get stuck in these situations, too.
But yeah, I’ve seen people managing to block an ambulance on an empty road, some drivers are a special kind of stupid. Which is another good reason why driving should not be the default mode of transport.
Not if people use a reasonable following distance.
The Orange Moron killed it, if I didn’t miss something
https://apnews.com/article/nyc-congestion-pricing-toll-trump-hochul-2c42443618f127f88bda986f1795eef5
They want to kill it but haven’t been able to. I was going to say; quite unbelievable, but with this ‘administration’ it’s not. Everything they’re doing is either counterproductive, fascist or just plain retaliation because ‘0wning the libs’.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/nyregion/mta-congestion-pricing-dot.html or https://archive.is/sv1RE
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.
Haha I like what you did there at the end
deleted by creator
Not only that, in many places there are dedicated bus, and taxi (and sometimes tram) lanes which can also be used by emergency services.
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.
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.
Audio: Whoever needed it, they’re dead.
Subtitle: Whoever needed it, they’re okay.alt source? catbox won’t load for me and many others.
Nobody moves says man showing video with car behind him literally moving out of the way. What an asshole.
Edit: no no don’t trust the evidence of your eyes trust the Narrative of the video.
Don’t be so fragile.
This is because Americans are garbage people
Wowowow
This is something of a new development in my experience. When I first started driving, people would actually move over to allow emergency vehicles to pass. But since COVID, it’s just gotten ridiculous. Absolutely nobody pulls the fuck over anymore.
I am also pretty sure it’s still against the law to not make way for emergency vehicles.
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 law in my part of the U.S. specifically says to pull to the right to let an ambulance pass, but as far as I know, it doesn’t give you the right to drive on the sidewalk (so as you say, nothing to account for a lack of places to move).
What our German friend there is describing is a convention to inform drivers whether they should pull to the right or to the left depending on lane position, which is really smart and which I’ve never heard of. If there is such a system here, it needs a marketing campaign, because it only works if everyone knows about it and clearly we’re not there yet.
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?
This guy is smug as fuck… is he really equating heavy traffic in NYC to all of America?
There was plenty of space to give way. But his “ja” at the end of every sentence makes my blood boil too
yes. kind refreshing to see that it isn’t just american influencers that make emotionally charged and shitty content.
NYC needs to ban cars
No cars on the island at least
Ah, so it is because of bikes! /s
Yeah those pesky cyclist blocking the road ahead!
Easy Douggie!!
Never send paramedics to do a German cyclist’s job!
Nothing to do with America.
I’ve seen the same asocial behaviour in Paris, when I was sitting on a bench near Notre dame.
There you can see a bridge over the Seine, and on the other side there is a hospital (I don’t know if it still operates, they’ve planned on closing it back then).There was also an ambulance driving there, and it took it also over 10 Minutes to cross that bridge.
It was really mindboggling to me.In my small town in Germany it works well though. Might be just a problem with bigger cities in general.
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).