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
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.
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
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?
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! 👍👍👍👍
Our culture is narcissism
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…
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.
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).
A+ happy German narration.
In Paris, government people and/or VIP use fake ambulances to take advantage of this and avoid being stuck with us peons.
Yep, we do not have the wide ass shoulders on our Autobahn network. We also know how to merge using the entire merging lane and the zipper effect. In the USA, it’s cross the white line at lower speeds to create an accordion effect.
As an Austrian, this works good but not always so good as it should
Long roadworks remain a problem too.
