America is fucked
America is fucked
78 comments
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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.
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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)
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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.
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I believe this video is from before the congestion pricing in NYC. I wonder if and how much it has improved since.
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Not only that, in many places there are dedicated bus, and taxi (and sometimes tram) lanes which can also be used by emergency services.
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Haha I like what you did there at the end
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Audio: Whoever needed it, they're dead.
Subtitle: Whoever needed it, they're okay.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And also we just let people die instead of enforcing the rules.
Fuck drivers
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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.
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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
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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
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Same here. I'm German. I mean, yeah, maybe for a few seconds or something. Until people fucking moved out of the way.
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Neither have I in America.
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Same in Sweden.
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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.
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Ok boomer
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Ah, so it is because of bikes! /s
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Easy Douggie!!
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Yeah those pesky cyclist blocking the road ahead!
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Now I want a kinky bicycle. I just have a straight one.
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Kinky and straight aren't mutual exclusive 😏
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Tape a dildo to the seat, now you have one too
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And people complain that climate protestors hold up ambulances, even though they always let emergency vehicles through.
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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
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The german guy is playing it up for views but i do agree that's pretty bad.
I've made the same observation when I visited New York. He's not really exaggerating
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NYC needs to ban cars
No cars on the island at least
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Park near a fire hydrant or pass a stopped school bus and everybody freaks out, but this is just fine somehow
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In NYC people block hydrants all the fucking time. Only time it's enforced is when there's a fire, by FDNY
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Dieser Kommentarbereich ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
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... ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ja
So viel Zeit muss sein
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In my experience this, and running red lights, is more of an American phenomena than one inherent to cars
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Never send paramedics to do a German cyclist’s job!
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This is because Americans are garbage people
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Wowowow
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alt source? catbox won't load for me and many others.
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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.
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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
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This guy is smug as fuck... is he really equating heavy traffic in NYC to all of America?
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There was plenty of space to give way. But his "ja" at the end of every sentence makes my blood boil too
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yes. kind refreshing to see that it isn't just american influencers that make emotionally charged and shitty content.
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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.
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This is a bunch of BS. Have you ever even been to the city?
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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Don't be so fragile.
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78 comments