Originally published at: Which country's drivers make way for ambulances? | Boing Boing
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UK drivers get fined for stopping or making illegal lane changes or turns when they try to get out of ambulances’ way
Does the ambulance get fined as well, for making a fuss?
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No, but it gets tutted at for queue jumping.
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Nice to see such a comprehensive, statistically robust sampling of each population grou- what’s that? Oh, this is just cherry picked YouTube clips put together by Some Guy to reinforce cultural stereotypes? Oh, never mind then.
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Yeah, it’s not very systematic. For example the German one is a huge fire engine on a two lane intercity road while others are smaller ambulances in city traffic. And it’s from a demonstration video, so showing the ideal situation on purpose.
It would be interesting to see an actual comparison, though.
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I don’t think any UK police would go out of their way to fine someone for doing something a bit daft when making way for an emergency vehicle - however, automated systems and cameras would be a different story, which I think is what the article tries to get at but comes over as scaremongering to a certain degree.
Of course you’d get fined if you pulled into a bus lane with automated fines, same with red lights and areas marked out for safety, which may be monitored by automated systems.
You then might or might not be able to argue your way out of a fine (I myself managed to get out of a parking fine near Covent garden when my car broke down - the only available spot was a residential parking space - I got the ticket as expected, but was able to get it nullified by providing the RAC invoice for the subsequent callout. A slightly different situation, I know, but it shows that there is some way of getting out of fines like these, in some cases).
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Drivers seemed to recat just fine in Spian.
(Side note: this post was really hard to type on a phone with autocorrect.)
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“ German cars vanish into side lanes so efficiently they may as well be self-driving”
That doesn’t sound like “self driving” cars at all.
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My master mind plan was to steal an ambulance and use it as my getaway car. It’s a flawless plan, except for the assholes that won’t pull over to let me by…
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we have a local ambulance that siren is so loud it hurts the ears quite intensely…
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Yeah. This is one in Germany, too, cherry-picked the other way.
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I was also comforted to see the drivers in Austrialia doing well.
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Most of these have roads that arent ideal for for a passing emergency vehicle.
Yes, I can attest that at least in Tijuana (not sure about the rest of Mexico), traffic is always crazy, so it’s difficult for ambulances to wade through the traffic even when people are trying to get out of the way.
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I especially enjoyed the examples from Spian and Austrialia.
But TBH apart from the inconsiderate pricks and entitled arseholes in Saudi Arabia (it figures) everyone else seemed much the same. The Brazil example showed cars doing what they could to make space when they could, and other examples where the cars had nowhere to go until traffic in front of them moved forward, do not justify concluding the drivers are indifferent.
There was a fantastic clip from years ago in a fly-on-the-wall documentary in the UK about ambulances where an ambulance was almost alongside a car with blues and twos fully on and it did not move, despite the ambulance being stuck and needing the car to move forward a few feet to make space. Both vehicles had their windows rolled down. The ambulance was stationary in this position for several seconds when the crew shouted out something like: “You may feel the urge to move your car, sir” when you know he wanted to scream: “MOVE YOUR FUCKING CAR YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE”
British public service politeness and fuckwit arseholery in a nutshell.
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It seems to me that it has gotten quite a bit worse during my lifetime
here in the PNWUSA.
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Growing up, and for my entire time living in northern Indiana, people pretty consistently slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road anytime something with flashing lights and siren came in the rearview mirror.
I’ve been in the South for three years now, and NOBODY gives a care. It also seems like the ambulances here have given up–their sirens are oddly subtle, you don’t hear anything until it’s right behind you. And without the visual cue of other drivers getting over, it’s harder to notice one coming.
It’s the sirens, I tell ya.
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I’ve seen people panic-stop and block an ambulance rather than continue up the road to let them past. The oncoming traffic in the other lane had to stop and back up to let it through. That’s how shambolic British drivers are when they hear a siren
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