Fuck Cars
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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)
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 believe this video is from before the congestion pricing in NYC. I wonder if and how much it has improved since.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
Haha I like what you did there at the end
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.
+1. I've never seen this problem in Chicago. Most people pull over and stop until the ambulance has passed.