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Audio: Whoever needed it, they’re dead.
Subtitle: Whoever needed it, they’re okay.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)
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.
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 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.
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
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
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.
Not if people use a reasonable following distance.
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’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.
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.
Ah, so it is because of bikes! /s
Yeah those pesky cyclist blocking the road ahead!
Easy Douggie!!
In my experience this, and running red lights, is more of an American phenomena than one inherent to cars
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 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).
Never send paramedics to do a German cyclist’s job!
alt source? catbox won’t load for me and many others.
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.
Ok boomer
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
Neither have I in America.
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.
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.
That’s not a dense urban situation at all. There was plenty of space on the road in the video. Usually the cars drive a bit on the pedestrian walkway or just really tight to the left/right end and it’s enough. Would also have been plenty sufficient on the road in the video
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.
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
This is because Americans are garbage people
Wowowow
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.
There was plenty of space to give way. But his “ja” at the end of every sentence makes my blood boil too
Nobody move says man showing video with car behind him literally moving out of the way. What an asshole.
Don’t be so fragile.
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.)
NYC needs to ban cars
No cars on the island at least
