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NYC needs to ban cars
No cars on the island at least
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)
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.
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 shift together.
Haha I like what you did there at the end
I believe this video is from before the congestion pricing in NYC. I wonder if and how much it has improved since.
The Orange Moron killed it, if I didn’t miss something
https://apnews.com/article/nyc-congestion-pricing-toll-trump-hochul-2c42443618f127f88bda986f1795eef5
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…
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.
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?
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.
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.
Dieser Kommentarbereich ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
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
Audio: Whoever needed it, they’re dead.
Subtitle: Whoever needed it, they’re okay.This is because Americans are garbage people
Wowowow
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
This guy is smug as fuck… is he really equating heavy traffic in NYC to all of America?
yes. kind refreshing to see that it isn’t just american influencers that make emotionally charged and shitty content.
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
Nobody move says man showing video with car behind him literally moving out of the way. What an asshole.
Don’t be so fragile.
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.
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.)
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.
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 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.
Ah, so it is because of bikes! /s
Easy Douggie!!
Yeah those pesky cyclist blocking the road ahead!
In my experience this, and running red lights, is more of an American phenomena than one inherent to cars
