And people say Germans don't have a sense of humor.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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I don't know man, this was depressing to watch.
Yup.
But filled with plenty of morbid humour all the same.
This guy is a professional comedian.
A German professional comedian.
It's almost the same thing...
Ambulances should have a traffic camera that gets verified by human traffic officers and sends fines to anyone not moving out of the way.
The NYC buses with dedicated lanes actually do have that! So it probably wouldn't be a huge leap for ambulances.
I'm in Montreal and I hate this so much. We have no emergency corridors, cars are taking all the space. I'm sitting in my apartment and those loud as fuck emergency vehicles are honking and blasting their sirens while stuck behind a row of cars, that everyone just expects to magically disappear if they just honk a bit louder.
And worse, the fucking fire department is stopping bike lanes, pedestrianized streets and fighting against modal filters because "it slows them down and could be dangerous for the lives of the citizens".
I can tell who is driving the ambulance by the style of siren chosen. Because somehow some ambulance drivers think that turning the siren on and off rapidly will make them move faster through gridlock.
Emergency vehicles here are seriously annoying, and apparently the solution is to make them even noisier and annoying rather than make some rules and infrastructure. It's high on my list of things that makes me want to move back to the countryside.
Having the fire dept fight against bike lanes and all that is also a problem in Ontario. And they say the exact same things too. It's insane that they can say such cognitively dissonant things; the damn traffic jam is gonna cost people's lives too if they're stuck in traffic, and what the fuck is their argument for that?
If they argue that their fat ass vehicles can't get into small spaces, tell them to fucking stop buying these shit from the US and look at how other countries run their show; get smaller vehicles and drive more vehicles out when needed, and not haul every tool under the sun for every emergency. And heck! Protection for bike lanes is generally nothing to their giant ass vehicles anyways!
And they need to also stop with the baseless mindset of "hurdurr we're different from other countries" and start understanding what that difference is and why they're there, and see that we're really not that different aside from how we've decided to fucking infest everyone's lives with cars.
Let the cities do things to get as many cars off the streets, and emergency services would then have less cars to deal with. If that doesn't sound reasonable to them, tell them they are part of their problems aside from being everyone else's.
FFS
For what it's worth, in Toronto the emergency services have been supportive of the bike lanes that Ford tried and apparently failed (ha ha) to tear out
Okay that's good to hear, even if it's an aboutface from them.
kinky bicycle? hmm
He’s not wrong. I’m optimistic about the future though. Congestion pricing has gone really well and NYC has a mayor who actually has a shot at moving the city in the right direction. NYC public transit sucks but it’s still orders of magnitude better than the rest of the USA. Just don’t get a heart attack or be poor and get a great heart attack.
In the Netherlands they have bike lanes wide enough for emergency vehicles to use them
I've lived in nyc for the past 20+ years and it STILL blows my mind that no one moves for emergency vehicles, it's infuriating
Get out of the way HOW? The streets are jammed, there is no where to pull over. If there is a lane to move over to, people do, but usually you can't move any better than the ambulance can.
When I was a kid, I was visiting relatives in some other city, and as we were driving down a road, and at the crest of a hill, we heard some emergency vehicles coming up behind us. My grandfather pointed through the windshield, and said "Watch!" and we watched as all the traffic lights down the road all turned green at once, and the firetruck drove straight through. Presumably the lights all went back to normal after he cleared the area.
They should be able to do that in NYC in extreme emergencies. If someone is just having a normal baby delivery, maybe it's not necessary to flip all the lights, but if someone is actively dying, throw the switch, and race to the hospital.
Pretty sure fire trucks, ambulances, and cop cars in NYC can all do that. The issue isn't the lights, it's that drivers in NYC often can't (No curb space) or won't (Far enough away that they're convinced it isn't their problem yet) pull out of the way.
Nobody moves...so uncivilised
“Nobody else is moving. Fuck that guy he’s dying anyways”
Ja
Ja, but he keeps saying, "in America..."
That's just the big cities, Johan. My little town? This would not happen.
Where are those big cities? In America…
Yeah, but not because of people being responsible, but rather because there are so few cars that even if they do almost nothing, the ambulance will still manage to pass them.
The right of way thing is true in cities in the US too (mid to small you will see it work too), it's just at certain level of gridlock it doesn't matter.
That's just AMERICAN big cities. He's already comparing it to other big cities.
In what universe is NYC car brained? They've been trying to reduce car traffic for years with congestion pricing and expanding the regions that don't need parking space mandates for new construction.
There is always a bigger fish.
They are car brained compared to some European cities, even if they are the most walkable large city in America.
Idk, car brained to me is actively promoting car centric policies when an area is already swamped with car infrastructure and New York does the opposite. Sure there's always going to be some knuckleheads who don't want sustainable transit options but for the most part it's a public transit focused city.