I didn‘t see any comment mentioning this, but not creating an emergency lane only 10 years ago was a huge problem in Germany. Then the government increased the fines massively and started a big awareness campaign. It took several years, but now it is the norm.
Intervention and change is possible as long as their is political will.
That push in Germany quickly got wider EU traction & it’s finally starting (5~10 years ago?) to be the norm in the main countries too (not just for when the traffic stops completely but even in cases of slow moving traffic like below 60 or maybe 80km/h).
Thx!
Interesting. I was going to reply that I have been in plenty of traffic jams on the Autobahn that did not have such a lane, but that was indeed more than 10 years ago!
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damn that is a long article
meanwhile if you did this in my home country, half the people there would just pass to the corridor never questioning for a single second why that corridor exists and why all the others are not using it
Same! Are you in Korea?
nope turns out there is more than one in that case
In America it would instantly be filled by cunts trying to cheat their way through traffic.
In Germany, we have laws for that.
…which are enforced?
Because that’s one major issue with the legal system of the USA.If you block the ambulance in Germany, you get punished nowadays.
Whether video evidence of driving through it without blocking an ambulance is enough? I don’t know.
Even trying to enforce the rules is a win in my book.
They are enforced.
Source: I spent nearly 20 years as a medic and a firefighter. And I have had cops arrest and ticket drivers for driving HUA, (Head Up Ass around emergency vehicles.) It’s an easy ticket.
Noice!
But it’s still an issue.
In america they have guns for that
We literally have this. We call it the “shoulder”.
And idiots try to drive on it to skip traffic.
There are shoulders in Germany as well, but they prefer that the ambulance drive through the middle lane.
Right? Around here, each side of a divided highway has two travel lanes marked. There is a narrow shoulder on the left, and a wide shoulder on the right, either of which is adequate for emergency vehicles.
The intended purpose is to facilitate future construction. There is enough room on each side of the median for three lanes plus a narrow shoulder. They can put up a temporary k-rail median and repaint the lane lines to move a lane of traffic across the normal median. They can completely close a lane of traffic for repairs, while retaining at least two lanes (plus a narrow breakdown lane) in each direction.
Using a the shoulder for emergency vehicles is not as good, as they are usually smaller and they are the place where those with damaged vehicles should stop. This means you cannot go as fast on them as you can in the lane shown in the video.
I’d recommend going exactly the same speed on either, and it’s not particularly fast.
Going fast is kind of essential for emergency response vehicles.
Exactly. They have to split the red sea like this in countries like Germany because there is no shoulder. Even in the video you can see if they go off to the side they’re ending up in a ditch.
Nope, im pretty sure the cars on the right are driving on the shoulder. If you look at the opposite side, there is a shoulder that nobody is driving on.
Most Autobahnen have a Seitenstreifen, which is essentially a shoulder, but in German. Maybe look things up before stating them?
Even drivers in the US are good about it 99.9% of the time if there is anywhere to go, they do get out of the way and stay out of the way. There are heavy fines. And if the Amp-a-Lamps driver can get your plate number, the cops WILL go look for you.
Source: I spent nearly 20 years in Amber-Lamps and fire trucks.
so frustrating to drive in germany and then come back to the us with so many inconsiderate idiots around.
Go drive in an Asian country and come back. The difference is incredible
Yeah, in the US there’s zero chance that opening isn’t filled by drivers who think they’re more important than everyone else.
Well yeah… Because it doesn’t look like people are making room for an emergency vehicle lol
Without context I wouldn’t know what was going on here. US law tells you to pull over to the same side so my first thought wasn’t emergency vehicles. I couldn’t blame a US driver for not knowing German road law
This isn’t pulling over because there’s an emergency vehicle actively there. They’re pulling over because traffic is blocked up, for the possibility that an emergency vehicle may need through. It doesn’t decrease throughput bit it does let emergency vehicles through. If people abuse it then throughput stays the same and they lose the extra benefit.
Fair enough but my point still stands. People aren’t gonna figure out why it’s happening without being taught to do it themselves so yeah Americans would drive right through
Honestly I blame speed limits. On the autobahn you know “if you’re slower, move over”. In the US, inevitably there is someone camping the left lane saying “I’m doing the limit so i have every right to use this as the long distance lane”
Buuut if they’re going the speed limit, how are you supposed to overtake them anyway? You wouldn’t break the speed limit, would you?
Old wisdom says at any time you can drive 10% more than the limit and face no issues
I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen a US cop pull someone over while going over the speed limit. Most of the time they are sitting in their cars doing fuckall. Other than getting overpaid to scroll on their phones of course.
It still amazes me when I see a huge pedestrian-annihilation-class pickup truck fly past a cop doing 90 mph in a 60 mph zone and absolutely nothing happens. I think to myself, surely they are going to get pulled over. That’s felony speeding.
Nope. That would require the cop to get off their ass and do something. The only time that happens in this country is when there’s a constitutionally protected protest happening or when someone with dark skin is in the vicinity.
Unless you’re black
Ffffuuuuuu, I’d definitely download a car!
You’ll figure it out in 10 years when your old enough to get your license.
It still boils down to individual vs collective importance and values.
He is right. Do not cross the speed limit or make others cross it. Or if you are really in hurry just use right lane don’t be beemer guy
Drive rush hour here daily, you’ll notice we have a fair share of our own inconsiderate idiots here.
Oh and literal reckless murderers.
I had a very similar feeling moving back from driving in The Netherlands to driving in Portugal.
(Mind you, in Portugal cars do reliably pull over to let emergency vehicles through)
As a german I’m always flabbergasted when people from other countries are amazed by that. It makes sense to do that - help get’s faster to the accident and therefore the road will be cleared much faster than if the emergency services are stuck somewhere in the traffic jam. Do you have this strange behavior in other parts of your daily life, too?
This would require people capable of thinking and having empathy for others
Well that’s what we teach children here 🤷
Here in America you’d get people peeling through the middle
That’s what’s amazing to me. Every single driver resisting the urge to cut the line when the opportunity is right there? Couldn’t be America.
It’s also severly punished
In the US? You mean other than keeping the shittiest health care system in the world just to be sure no money would go to someone who can’t pay?
Our culture is narcissism
Around here, emergency vehicles just drive in the shoulder when this happens.
We Brits got rid of a lot of them (and laughably called them “smart” motorways), so now we just sit there and watch people burn.
Yes, but you’re ignoring the advantages of smart motorways. By removing the hard shoulder, that ensures people who break down can block an entire lane and endanger themselves and others in the process! Smart! Bonus! Win! 👍👍👍👍
I know atleast one country where half the people there would try to use that corridor. So yea it requires some couple levels in civilization.
Americans would be too angry about the one or two cars or motorcycles that might occasionally take advantage to be able to do this. Even merging results in a lot of grumpy drivers trying to prevent “cutting”.
Great idea, though.
Driving through the rettungsgasse is punished very heavily though
Americans literally do the same thing…
That’s the plan. In real life, only few ambulances manage “to fly through”, there are always some jerks ignoring this rule.
Probably still massively speeds up response times though. I imagine it wouldn’t be that hard to squeeze 2 cars in that given space allowing the emergency vehicle to get past the person not following the rules.
The photo example is extreme. It’s usually narrower.
Still though, Ive seen traffic in NYC keep an ambulance for two lights.
Well, it’s a high-speed 3-lane road that would fit 5 parked cars curb to curb so Rettungsgasse is where the space goes. Most other roads can barely yield 1 lane but emergency drivers are skilled and European fire trucks are not 1.5 lanes wide; still better to use a narrow free lane between 2 stationary ones rather than one of 2 crawling ones
Prisoners dilemma always wins.
Yeah but not in the way I think you mean: https://ncase.me/trust/
- Prisoners dilemma doesn’t work when people are thinking of tomorrow. Once you take into consideration how your actions affect the decisions other people make in the future, it is always better to cooperate. That’s a big assumption from people, but if they don’t, they are not acting rationally in their own interest like in the dilemma.
- I’m pretty sure this comment is not complaining about people driving through the gap, it’s about people who are too absent minded to create a gap in the first place. In that case that’s not prisoners dilemma at all, they don’t get anything from not moving to the side.
wait hold on. i don’t see an emergency vehicle. you just do this because traffic is stopped?
how do you think it would work if they only did it when there was an ambulance?
That’s how it works in the UK. You see a blue light in your rearview, then everyone tries to find space and the emergency vehicle proceeds at a clip of 5-10mph, while the affected people ahead burn/bleed etc.
I wonder how much more time they would have needed in this example:
I guess 10 minutes?
I guess so. I think there are a lot of service roads onto the motorway that the public doesn’t have access to, which means in theory the emergency services would never have to drive that far through traffic. But I’m guessing.
Yeah same in France
Same way as in statesia. It wouldn’t
I mean that’s kinda what we do in France and it works mostly fine I think ?
Yes, we are taught to move left or right to create a middle lane during a traffic jam.
Yes
this makes my “i must sort my wires into different lengths and colors” gland so very happy. i must learn your ways.
The idea that another road user might have higher priority is unfortunately anathema to drivers here.
If this even happened here the corridor would simply be full of utes.
Excuse me, your honor, full of youths.
I understood that reference
I must be broken as often I’ll let a bus out expressly thinking that a vehicle with 20 people in has to be more important than me.
I’m not in the US thou
Letting busses out: awesome.
It’s actually really relaxing and de-stressing to be a considerate driver… right up until the ass tailgating you gets all uppity.
I’m in the UK so it’s the norm (saying that, not sure if that applies to London). If they’re indicating, you wouldn’t dream of not letting them out.
It’s more my thought pattern as I do
NZ here. We’re, generally, incredibly arrogant drivers.
I think it comes from having a very low population density for such a long time: the roads were empty enough that you could “own the road”. Now, same roads with five times the density and that doesn’t work out like that anymore but the mindset persists.
Here in the UK we do something similar, though not until we see the flashing lights. We pull across as far as we can in order to allow as much space as possible.
That is the law in the US as well. TWICE I’ve seen someone ignore it and both times other citizens (in cars as well as pedestrians) bully the driver into following it.
Driver: I didn’t have anywhere to go!
Bike messenger: Turn into the fuckin alley or I’m breaking all your lights
Just the other day I watched some luxury SUV sitting dumbfounded in a left turn lane with an ambulance flashing lights and blaring the horn behind it. Oh yeah, the left turn lane was the one that led to the emergency room parking lot. I wish that bike messenger was around then
Bike messenger are the real police. They’ll give a homeless guy a sandwich a then turn around and beat the shit out of a pickpocket.
You do not fuck with bike messengers, they’re pissed off at the world and right to be. Plus they know all the escape routes.
i’m just trying to think of the synchronicity of this. i did the running sports in school because i got good legs. i did the kicking martial arts thing because i got good legs. i am doing the leg exercise midlife crisis thing because blah blah. i’m wondering if i should get some mall ninja throwing stars to go with my new angry midlife crisis this sounds fun
And most time not until the blue lights are right up someone’s ass
How can there be traffic if there are two empty lanes? We’ve already added more lanes, the traffic has been solved. If the ambulance needs to get through, they should add a fifth lane. (/s)
That’s crazy, all these suckers waiting while there is an open lane right there!!
There are easier ways to say you drive a Mercedes.
Anecdotally, 40-ish years ago, one of my mom’s relatives came to visit from Poland. There are a whole lot of wild stories about that visit and from when my mom visited Poland around that same time that highlighted a lot of differences between life in the US and from behind the iron curtain at the time.
While he was here, her relative was amazed to see cars pulling off to the side to let emergency vehicles pass, that was apparently something totally new to him.
I dont get it.
Here the shoulder is traversable. Like its wide enough to drive down.
We dont do this because emergency services just drive down the shoulder.
What would you prefer? An uninterrupted lane or one where you have to get past broken down cars/merging traffic, …
In a situation where every second can count, it’s easy to see why Germany (among other countries) does this.
loads of commenters in this thread are saying that when cars part it doesn’t form “an uninterrupted lane” because inevitably there are obstacles, like people who don’t do it, or don’t leave enough room, or what have you.
shoulders aren’t really littered with broken down cars.
Shoulders are still for emergency stops even when the traffic is standing & ppl might leave their vehicles.
The middle of the road is more traveled & is on average cleaner of debris that could eg damage a tyre. Also less chances of ppl walking there.
It’s just that someone improved on a working shoulder system with what is statistically a bit better one (that works even in cases where there is no shoulder). And it didn’t cost much (basically just marketing to get ppl to understand it).
You know, why not be better if we can be better?
Because, those thread is full of people saying that in practice it never looks like this.
I always see this tho, and I’m not even from Germany.
It might not be that perfectly straight, but I can clearly see it as a better practice that the 10+ years ago (afaik the data shows that too).
This isn’t just for standing traffic, it’s for rush hours too.
(If someone wants to maliciously stop emergency vehicles they can do that on shoulders too.)
We have an uninterrupted emergency lane.
We give our emergency traffic both the left and the right shoulder to get where they need to go. You give them one lane in the middle; we give them two lanes on the sides.
The left shoulder is an uninterrupted lane. The right shoulder is our breakdown lane. We very rarely enter or exit a divided highway on the left.
The shoulders in Germany and to my understanding most of Europe are used to give broken down vehicles space to change a tire or wait for service in safety, or to allow construction site to move the lanes to the sides without merging. Traffic jams are often a result of to much traffic, construction or accidents and often enough cause cars to break down. Hence the shoulders are often blocked in situations, where the emergency vehicles are needed. Also, there are many, of not most, streets without shoulders. The Autobahn/ National routes being the exception.
Also the shoulders in Germany, the US and UK are in my experience rather bumpy. So driving in them at full speed can be a bit risky.
I thing the argument for this method is that it is universal: traffic is not moving? Move over and make space and allow emergency vehicles to pass through at full speed.
We dont have shoulders here, on account of all the road construction.
The shoulders here are for “emergency stops” not “emergency vehicles”, an abundance could crash, drive over someone going for a piss, or get stuck behind a broken vehicle.
Also there is more change for debris in (less used) emergency lane than in the middle of the two inner lanes (less chance for a crash or flat tyre).
The intrusive thought to just pull out and gun it down that road is fucking strong.
i see that regularly, when an ambulance carves out a lane there’s always one or two impatient mfs following it
Which gets fucking expensive quick, because it’s illegal and the probability is high that police and / or ambulance already are at the end of your race track
I mean that’s why it’s an intrusive thought instead of a good idea.
thats seemingly what we do in britain!
“High-ho, Silver! AWAAaYyYy!”
Might be legal if you’re on a motorcycle. If it isn’t, it should be. No reason to not allow lane filtering.
A fast moving vehicle bearing down on an accident site? Nope.
What are you talking about?
The asshole is strong in this one. You must be an American.
There’s a reason I called it an intrusive thought…
/s
/s makes it clearer, you’re not just callinge an asshole FYI.
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