Shocked people have bad reactions or none at all.
Most people in Germany drive stick.
My guess is that this person stalled their car and had trouble starting it again and figuring out the appropriate reaction.
While this is bad in an emergency situation something like that can happen to all of us. Even myself who drives routinely a fast (stick-shift) car or a fast motorbike on German Autobahn.
Interpretation and wording of the article and comments are way more telling about their respective authors than this video is telling about the personality of the driver.
Hey everyone, this is a textbook chance to apply Hanlonâs Razor.
Feel free to call the driver an idiot for not reacting properly. It sure looks like he/she is one. But do we have sufficient evidence for the asshole theory?
This is what I took away from the reddit thread on this topic. What compromising precedent would allowing such a behaviour set? Would allowing what appears to be common sense, under law, open the government to liability if someone were to hurt or kill people in an attempt to clear a path for an emergency vehicle?
I mean, WTF? Do people in these circumstances tend to lose their shit so completely and consistently that they cannot be trusted to manoeuvre their vehicles on the same roads they are already manoeuvring on? If so, why isnât extensive training for such situations a requirement for a driving license?
I personally witnessed an ambulance being inconvenienced in a such a fashion recently. The car causing the blockage was surrounded by other vehicles that promptly got out of the way, behind and in front of it. I can only imagine a state of blind panic overcame the driver, in which case, I would hazard a stance that such people should not be driving and that the responsibility lies with the government to ensure that they are weeded out and not put in charge of powerful, metal death machines.
Itâs basically a British thing, maybe? It all seems to lurk somewhere in the constellation of ânanny stateâ, âjobsworthâ, officious", and various other qualities of the Tabloid Utopia.
It seems to be reflexive for drivers to just.plain.stop for emergency vehicles. I canât count the times Iâve seen four lanes of traffic freeze in place, blocking all four, because the <expletives> never remember the âpull overâ part.
I so wish that the fire engines and ambulances had cameras and the support to issue citations for that crap.
But the lights were fully noticeable for the 5-10 seconds it took the truck to approach. If youâre that unaware of whatâs going on around you you shouldnât be driving. If youâre fully deaf, thatâs even more reason to be looking in your mirrors as much as possible.
Ultimately the driver should have been aware enough to see/hear the fire truck approaching and pull in to that gap at the side of the road to let it past before getting to the lights. That way there would have been no question of breaking the law (I assume - I donât know what that bitâs for).
First of all: If a firetruck or ambulance is behind you, no one will fine you, for going out of the way. Even if you drive a couple of meters past the red traffic light. On the contrary, the traffic rules say, you have to go out of the way and help the emergency by not blocking the road. I assume, the driver is in full panic mode, because you cannot oversee the lights and the sounds of our fire trucks. In driver school you learn to pull over to the left or right, if you hear or see them from the distance. This is total normal behaviour and normally, everybody keeps cool and stops. Perhaps an elderly or unskilled driver.
After reading all the comments so far, I watched the video. The driver sat there until the moment the emergency vehicle was finally able to get into the lane next to him/her, at which point the driver started moving forward (I assume the light had changed to green) in parallel with the truck. Thatâs a lot of cluelessness while driving a car.
I remember Stephen Fry surprising the panelists on QI when he mentioned that Americans pull over when an emergency vehicle has its sirens on. I was shocked to learn that they donât do that in the UK.
Iâll bet money the driver was using headphones and talking on the phone or jamming to Taylor Swift and didnât notice the truck.
The thing isâŚemergency vehicles are allowed to plow through anything in their way if the situation warrants itâŚIf I had been driving thefire truck, I would have happily pushed the car out of my way. Jackwagon.
The didnât move because they might get a fine excuse is weak. The driver didnât have to âbreak the lawâ. They just had to move forward slightly.
Nonsense. We pull over here too - unless that isnât the quickest way to get out of the way. The only circumstances where that might not happen is where there are long queues so no way for vehicles to pull to the side. Thatâs more to do with traffic density than our urge to pull over.
