I’m not an American but I’ve lived in Washington for years. Every time an Ambulance is moving with its siren on, people move to the side of the road to let it pass. This guy is just inaccurate.
Manhattan has gridlock that prevents this. There’s no space to move into.
yup, I was on a street so narrow just a couple months ago that I couldn’t pull over far enough to let a firetruck go by. I had pulled over as far as I could. The truck got behind me and I couldn’t move over. SO I just said “fuck it” - and zoomed into the road as fast as was safe and turned off the road the first place I could find.
He clipped the video as someone was moving out of the way
Nobody more annoying than a German tourist bitching about everything
Edit:
ITT Americans hate being called out for their bullshit, unless it’s by Germans 🤔
I’d say waiting for an ambulance while a loved one dies in front of you just because assholes wouldn’t get out of the way is more annoying. No doubt followed by some health insurance bullshit that makes zero sense in any other country. But no, it’s the tourist who’s wrong.
There might be somebody… ☝🏼
Yeah, but do you know what their mum says about them?
Eh, feels like he’s playing up the stereotype of the eternal German.
"…WE DON’T DO ZIS IN GERMANY! YOU BUILD HOUSES WITH WOOD? WE DON’T DO ZIS IN GERMANY. YOU DON’T SEPARATE GLASS FROM RECYCLING? BUT WE DO ZIS IN GERMANY!!!
I’m allowed to say that, I’m German myself. We are obnoxious and tone-deaf fuckers.
Could just be they talk so damn loud they can’t hear anyone else.
There’s tone deaf and there’s common sense, life saving practices.
This. I absolutely prefer to be a tone-deaf fucker among tone-deaf fuckers if that means my ambulance arrives timely after someone tried car buttsex at 260 kmh. (162 mph)
What, speed limits? Don’t you dare touch my freedom.
It’s Manhattan you’re not getting above 26 let alone 260. 2.6 is a good day.
Agreed
To be fair, with the congestion that severe, the ambulance should use helicopters. Like they do here in London.
Not sure you want that with no faa
I’m sure you DON’T want that with no FAA
Good luck finding a spot to land somewhere close within Manhattan. Unless you happen to have the heart attack next to a car park (or the central park) that also happens to not be heavily used right now there’s hardly any spot to safely land.
in London and other cities it’s less of a problem given we don’t build that many high rise buildings and got more big old market places and small parks.
True, I guess the reality is they are only Americans anyway
A chopper can land safely on any road cross. And NY has shit loads of them. Then it’s a 1 minute walk.
We need them to rappel from the helicopter and swing right into your appartment through the window. This is how we save lives.
Trauma team is on the job
“This Berk had Platinum coverage?”
I didn’t think you could make the job of a paramedic even more exciting than it already is, but here we are.
I saw this exact same thing yesterday in Cologne Germany but not with one, but two ambulances.
As a city dweller I never seen this happen in Germany ever in my life. So not too common at least.
Germany is better than most places, but it happens here too. It could be one of those things you only notice when you’re looking for it.
I’ve never seen someone open carry a gun in the US but when you listen to people it sounds like everyone does.
I was a my friends WG (group apartment) and her roommate just got back from the US. She was shocked that the Americans even put sugar in their bread. Something something it’s why they are all fat and unhealthy. I was curious, so got all of the german bread there… And you know what? It all had a higher sugar content than the American bread example.
Regular, unpackaged, German bread doesn’t contain added sugar though? I just looked it up for the supermarkets in my area, so I’m sure I’m not spouting bullshit.
Genuine question, what bread did you look at?
There are varieties with sugar, but it’s not the norm. This is definitely much more typical for other countries (not just the US).
What bread are you eating? Another example I can’t relate to at all. I usually bake my own bread, sometimes I buy. Never had sugar in it. Maybe you were looking at Brioche or something? I consider that more of a sweet like cake or muffins.
This is not the bread I was eating, it is the bread they had at home. Nearly all commercial bread has sugar added to it. Nearly all german bread bought at german bakeries have a sugar content. Typical content is between .06 and 1.5g. Go to a grocery store and flip over a bread package. Go to one of the bakery chains and look at their nutrition facts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hwGd3QWgTLs&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD
For contrast: a video of a more congested street in Paris 17 years ago. The situations aren’t completely comparable: bigger emergency vehicle, smaller other vehicles, smaller street with less options to get out of the way, … One other major difference and the reason I’m posting this, is that 30 seconds into the video, you can see that most drivers have moved to the sides of the road AHEAD of the firetruck and that they are holding still while waiting on the firetruck to pass them. The street + path are less than ideal and there isn’t really enough room, so the truck is still not going very fast, but it’s at least able to keep moving. By moving to the sides, the drivers also blocked in that smaller firetruck that was coming from the side street, so that’s going to cause some confusement after the big one has passed.
The reason that that NYC ambulance is completely stuck in traffic, isn’t because of space, because there is plenty compared to that Parisian street, but it’s the drivers who are not creating a path. It’s not an infrastructure problem, it’s something that can be taught + encouraged if there is a political will to make a change.
Distracted drivers are a serious problem in more ways than one. A couple weeks ago I was 2nd in line at a red light, only us 2 in that lane and several more in the other. An ambulance drove up behind us flashing and it was immediately clear the shortest path through the intersection was for our 2 cars to clear out. I put on my hazards and starting alternating lights and horn, while the person ahead sat blithely scrolling through their phone while the ambulance and I were both laying on the horn and didn’t move until the light turned green. Even then, didn’t pull aside so the bus had to weave around him. The lack of situational awareness and empathy on the road is sadly lacking.
Yeah, smartphones are a menace as well in traffic, especially when combined with someone as oblivious as in your example :). The government(s) in my country has had several police + information campaigns against smartphone use since a few years. There’s now also a fine of 175 euro + loss of driver’s license for 15 days for using the smartphone while driving in traffic. And waiting in traffic, still counts as driving. If used for navigation, then the destination has to be put in before starting to drive & the smartphone has to be in a holder or connected to the infotainment system.
This heavier punishment is pretty recent and the chance of being caught seems low, so there’s still often people using smartphones inappropriately. Last one I saw this week was an oblivious teenager on a bicycle. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s been a noticable change in a few years.
Ja.
There are cities that use medics on motor bikes for this exact reason. They can’t evac someone but getting there quickly to use a defibrillator or control bleeding could make a difference.
Absolutely every second for an ambulance matters. Every. Second.
People blocking an ambulance should be punished and made examples of.
Nobody is blocking the ambulance here, there’s literally nowhere to go. Have you never been to a real city before?
I live in Atlanta. One of the slowest most congested city’s in America. We hold record to the slowest intersection in the country. In the smallest worst parts of the city we get out of the way for emergency vehicles.
Have you ever been to a real city?
This is a funny clip and an accurate depiction of NYC congestion.
But, I live in a major city and we make way for ambulances. If it’s this bad we’ll end up with civilians running red lights or cops on motorbikes to unfuck gridlock.
I myself ran a red light last week in rush hour to GTFO when I hear sirens. Just turn on my hazards, slow roll into the red light. Cars were already stopping for me so I was safe, then pulled over.
This is really just making fun of NYC traffic and how fucked it is. The delivery makes it extra funny since we rarely get such an animated German on the front page.
Ja?
You should see major cities in latin america if you think that’s bad. In many countries it’s like they don’t even care.
The US has no excuse though, we should be way, way better.
Why would cities in latin america have excuses?
Education quality is a tip of the iceberg.
Talk to someone who went to a public school in say the dominican republic. I’ve heard stories of years of kids just waiting around with next to no actual teaching involved from someone who was physically there in their childhood. If you don’t go to a private school odds are you aren’t going to get any real education or structure beyond what you pick up at home… and odds are your parents were in the same boat.
The US education system has been nothing like that, it is going to get like that in the south though. In remote low population areas it’s very possible to get bad - and clearly some teenage pregnancies disrupt things in the US, but in the DR it’s a lot worse.
I’m from Chile and whenever you’re in a jam and an ambulance needs to get through, cars move out of their way to let it through. In Santiago, at least. We also stop at zebra crossings to let pedestrians cross.
Sure and Santiago is a horrible example. I was just there a few months ago. It feels the most like boston of anywhere else in latin america. When I was in el salvador I thought I was gonna get robbed at the airport, where they pat you down at each departure gate.
The wages are livable, the neighborhoods are safe(mostly), the housing is affordable, the food is terrible (compared to lima anyway.) I couldn’t get enough of the mountains.
In lima I was getting cased by pickpockets, in santiago I didn’t ever feel that way. Lima’s traffic is on another level. Santiago’s rush hour is much more organized and you have way more street lights and better drivers. In lima as a pedestrian you have to RUN so they don’t hit you. In santiago they stop and let you cross - something nearly unheard of in a lot of other latin american nations.
Oh look a cyclist bitching about shit
i lol’d
In case you wanna see a “RETTUNGSGASSE!!!” (= rescuing lane) in action this clip is what it looks like ideally. If traffic slows down for whatever reason or if there are sirens in the distance drivers are supposed to assume this formation pre-emptively and misusing it is a crime.
That’s how it’s supposed to work in the US too. Maybe it depends on the state but in MN at least it’s illegal to fail to pull over for emergency vehicles. If you see any emergency vehicle on the road running with lights on then you are supposed to stop and pull off to the side so that they can have the whole road.
The video in the OP looks nuts to me too. I’ve never seen people fail to pull over for an emergency vehicle in my area.
This is a very NYC phenomenon, everywhere else I’ve ever been and lived in the US moves out of the way for emergency vehicles with their lights and sirens on, I’ve seen both issues where there is nowhere to go and times where people just don’t care, every time I’m in NYC I hope to not need medical attention
This is how it is in Manhattan when it’s busy. It’s not so much failing to pull over so much as there is nowhere to go.
So I actually experienced one of these on 64W between VA Beach and Richmond. It was amazing how everyone including myself just instinctively moved to the sides of the road. It’s not a hard concept it just takes cooperation.
Also space to pull over is important. Here in the midwest we have room to move over and everyone does, honestly way more than is necessary. Like people start to pull over a few blocks in front of the ambulance if they just hear the siren.
New York’s problem in the video is the congestion makes it hard to move out of the way when there is nowhere to go.
At about 10 seconds on the video you can actually see a guy getting out of the way of the ambulance to let it through, though he was not doing it preemptively and the guy ahead of him couldn’t care less.
What’s German for “trying too hard?”
I get imense stress from having an ambulance behind me even if there’s plenty of room to pass on the side. Immediately plotting where to go if it needs to go exactly where I am.
I can’t imagine having an ambulance behind you and going ‘Meh, I’m driving here.’This happened to me once. It was a main road with heavy traffic. I pulled over to the right to let the ambulance pass, but because of traffic, I was effectively sitting on the right lane. Apparently the ambulance wanted to move to the right lane because they were gonna turn right at the corner up ahead. I felt like an asshole because to everyone else on the road, it looked like I intentionally blocked the ambulance. And the siren blaring right behind you while the driver is blasting the horn is very stressful.
If the ambulance is immediately behind you, you’ve already failed.
In “we’ll-behaving” countries ambulance does not lose speed. If you hear a siren, you pull over, doesn’t matter if you see it or not.
I’m not directing this at you, just explaning the course of action for people like in the video.
nyc is a crazy city
Ayyyy I’m driving here
