A new way to make money! Much easier than waiting for someone to need an ambulance!
Infinite money hack!
Pro gamer move
Meanwhile in Russia(and pretty much rest of Europe): citizems get full healthcare and even foreigners get some of it. For free.
This is what happens if any foreigner for example breaks bone in Russia:
- Emergency, including emergency specialized, medical care is provided to foreign citizens in case of sickness, accident, trauma, poisining and other cases requireing emergency treatment. Such medical treatment provided by state and municipal healthcare organizations is free of charge.
Oh lol, America is now officially worse than Russia. Well that didn’t take long.
America is a third world country with a Gucci belt.
“Hoesch estimated to police that he was going 5 mph to 10 mph and said he didn’t think the ambulance was going to turn in front of him.”
-So he’s illegally passing on the right at an intersection and making assumptions. -Wouldn’t have a case with me on jury.
The ambulance was making an illegal turn across traffic.
This was in the US where they drive on the right making a right turn not ‘across traffic’. The picture at the article further shows the positions.
Okay, let me explain it to you: if there are two lanes going in the same direction, you are in the left one, and you turn right, you are turning across traffic (across the right lane going in the same direction as you). That’s what happened here. The fact that there was space to the right of the ambulance for the cyclist to be in means there were effectively two lanes.
The picture in the article clearly shows there’s only a right and left lane. There is no room for turning lanes. There’s also no space for a vehicle. Space for a bike doesn’t make it a lane.
What part of “you already conceded that point” did you not understand?
But hey, you want to claim there was only one lane now? Fine. In that case, the cyclist was the vehicle lawfully occupying it and the ambulance must have swung wide to the left for some reason, out of the lane, and then back into it. Either way, it crossed the path of and collided with a vehicle in that lane. You are not entitled to deny this point.
- Cyclists are traffic.
- The ambulance was making a right turn.
- The ambulance hit the cyclist from the side.
- Therefore, the ambulance was turning across traffic, because no traffic means no cyclist to hit. QED.
Um what? From the article you posted
“he and the ambulance were traveling the same direction”
“The ambulance attempted to make a right turn onto another street”
They were both traveling on the right side of the road of (based on the supplied pictures from the articles) a two way, single lane each way street, and the ambulance turned right and didn’t cross any traffic, thus the Ambulance didn’t make a illegal turn.
The Ambulance should be at fault, and the Fire and Rescue should be covering charges as the ambulance driver wasn’t being well aware enough to make the turn, but at the same time Hoesch, The cyclists, also should have given way.
I’m all for less cars on the road, but don’t go throwing information that isn’t true, please.
if there is a cyclist on your right, it doesn’t matter if there are two lanes, you don’t cut their path: if they go straight, they have priority
If you were turning right, and there was a pedestrian in the crosswalk, would it be okay to hit the pedestrian?
I think it would be fair to blame the infrastructure if we want. Bikes shouldn’t be exposed to right turning traffic. Clearly it’s a safety concern.
Nevertheless, regardless if you’re turning left or right, you still need to yield to whatever is in your way. Just because you are making a right turn does not automatically grant you right of way.
They were both traveling on the right side of the road of (based on the supplied pictures from the articles) a two way, single lane each way street, and the ambulance turned right and didn’t cross any traffic, thus the Ambulance didn’t make a illegal turn.
Okay, I’ll try a second time to explain:
The ambulance did cross traffic, by definition, because the bicycle was to the right of it and counts as traffic. In order for it to not cross traffic, it would have needed to start the turn from a position far enough to the right that there would have been no space for the cyclist to be in.
Cyclists don’t purposefully cram themselves into tiny spaces between cars and curbs, you know. The only reason a cyclist would enter the space between the ambulance and the curb would be if the ambulance was waaaaaaay off to the left somewhere and left a huge (several foot wide) gap that invited him in, and that’s not something that is okay for a car about to make a right turn to do.
Bottom line is, it is illegal to right-hook a cyclist. If you hit a cyclist while performing a right turn, you fucked up. Full stop, end of. I don’t understand why people are having difficulty understanding this concept!
That’s an interesting business strategy, I’ll give 'em that
Like firemen setting fire to extinguish.
Sounds like a pretty straightforward lawsuit
Your honor…he hit me!
Nuh-uh!
Yeah huh!!!
He started it!!!
No I didn’t!!!
Moooooom!!!
Your mom has been dead for 32 years…you’re 81
And I’m still bike riding the mean streets of NYC!
Yeah, and getting billed for your bad driving.
The bad driver was the one not getting billed.
This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Seriously, don’t slip. It will both literally and metaphorically cost you an arm and a leg in the states.
Ambulance in my area
Maybe playing devil’s advocate here, but if it was the ambulance’s fault then the ambulance company’s insurance should be paying for all of the medical bills, including the ambulance ride. And the bill for the ambulance ride pays the EMS workers salaries and the vehicle maintenance.
The amount of profiteering in the medical industry is obscene, but I’m not sure this is an example of it…
I’m not a lawyer, but it strikes me that this could be exactly what is happening. The ambulance company’s insurance wouldn’t pay the hospital directly, they aren’t health insurance. So instead, the cyclist’s health insurance footed the initial bill. Then they went after the cyclist for his deductible/copay/whatnot. Now he has to get the money from the ambulance company. If this was vehicle on vehicle violence, he would have gone to his auto insurance, who would have in turn went after the ambulance company’s insurance, but he might not have auto insurance or auto insurance might not be willing to get involved because he wasn’t driving. So he has to go direct to the company. Wouldn’t be shocking if the company pushed off any non-legal petitions from him because he doesn’t have the name weight of an insurance company with lawyers on retainer, so now he is seeking a legal remedy. Insurance doesn’t just work always, there is often a degree of negotiating and litigation involved in these exchanges, especially if one party disagrees with another on matters of liability
He was on a bike… it wasn’t worth abandoning the car
How the fuck is this “fuck cars” content? I hate cars as much as everyone here, but I don’t think we can replace ambulances with bikes
The point of an ambulance is to get to the hospital as fast as possible, while have other people keeping the person stable. They also need to not leave the person exposed to all the various debris that is thrown up by fast moving vehicles. This is an awful idea.
You, kind sir, deserve a reward.
Bravo!
It is “fuck cars” content because 1. the lack of proper bike infrastructure is what led to the crash, and 2. making road victims have to hire lawyers just to get their medical bills paid.
Trumps america, not 1,800 3,000! It would be communism otherwise!
Is this fuck cars or fuck the us?
Show of hands, who pays for ambulances regardless of why?
I will always opt for a Lyft or Uber, unless I am actively dying from something that could kill me in 30 minutes or less, like a massive severed artery or something like that.
They are just as fast, and if I start literally dying in the hospital waiting room, they will most likely pay attention.
The only way it makes sense to take an ambulance to a hospital is if you literally have no other option, or if you are so seriously injured you’ve already lost consciousness or are mostly paralyzed.
You can call an ambulance, paramedics arrive, stabilize you, and then refuse to get in the ambulance.
This costs you nothing.
Then you just bite on your wallet and take an Uber or Lyft, which costs 10 to 20 dollars.
Get in the ambulance? 1 to 3 thousand dollars, for a shitty version of the care you’ll recieve in the hospital anyway, can’t avoid those costs.
My intention is definitely “fuck cars.” The fucked-up thing here is that even ambulance drivers, who should know better more so than almost anybody, are incompetently right-hooking cyclists. Billing him for it is merely the icing on the shit-cake.
A lot of EMTs work 24-hour shifts, and 48-hour shifts are not uncommon. The thought that the ambulance driver on the road next to me might be at hour 46 is… frequently worrying.
The problem isn’t the EMTs being incompetent, the problem is with the industry standards and the employers.
Exactly this. They transported someone, they filled out a PCR for billing to send to insurance and the patient.
That again sounds more like a shithole country problem tan a car problem.
I was forced to work a few 24+ hour shifts in healthcare and working on zero sleep fucked me up. It gave me migraines, vomiting, insomnia, manic depression and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.
It is beyond cruel and inhumane that employers can force people to work without sleep. It is so fucked that not allowing someone to sleep is considered a form of torture by the Geneva convention.
My former roommate is an EMT and he spent 90% of his 48 hour shifts sleeping and playing video games.
So your alternative would be that ambulances should no longer use cars? From my perspective all kind of emergency services such as fire department, law enforcement, ambulances should be the very last cars we get rid of as a society. They have to be fast and they need to transport a lot of stuff and people.
The rest of the world does without GIANT and dangerous emergency vehicles for one. They still put out fires and transport sick people. How american fire departments are getting people killed (not just bikes)
Fun fact, many if not most of those ambulances are made in Canada, and not the USA.
Fun fact: Where they are made doesn’t dictate what specs they should have.
Absolutely true, it was mostly just a response to the “rest of the world” part of the grandparent’s comment.
The rest of the world often also builds better infrastructure, like a protected bike lane, to signifcantly reduce the conflicts between cars and not cars.
A bike lane would’ve helped. If there wasn’t one, I can see a good reason for whatever the fuck really happened here.
If there had been a bike lane, he could/would have stayed there behind the stopping line acknowledging the right of the ambulance to go first, but without one…I can see someone in panic trying to get out of the way and then getting run over regardless of where he was positioned.
Youre ignoring the bike lanes are separate from the car lanes, which protects cyclists. But in the US the firedept doesn’t like that. Lanes need to be so wide and space so clear that the bikes have no space
I’m not sure I get what you’re saying, or what I’m missing.
I’m talking about the most basic kind of bike lane, which by all means is just a line on the tarmac. It does however ensure that the bike has a place to be, and that the bike will be visible to the cars, because the bike lane’s stopping line is further ahead than that of the cars. I also don’t know the exact situation from the article, but if the bike had been at the stopping line in this bike lane, it would never conflict with a right turning ambulance.
Most countries that do that are also significantly smaller lol
Which makes my point. Japan has 300+ people per square km, almost 10x as dense as the US. They still put out fires and carry sick people.
My point is it’s much easier to have localized support when there isn’t miles between buildings lol
The size of a country shouldn’t impact urban areas that much. Cyclists aren’t biking from california to florida on a daily basis, they are biking from their home to their job, gym, or groccery store. Your country is not too big for bike lanes, you’re city planners are just wastefull.
The rest of the world does without GIANT and dangerous emergency vehicles for one.
Could you show me those small and safe emergency vehicles that are used outside the USA? Because I’m outside the USA, I literally live near a firefighter station, and they’re all probably as big as US vehicles.
Literally the video i shared explains everything down to the metrics? Why are you sealioning on the specific post that has your answer?
And also because someone else discussed german firetrucks I know the sizes. German fire trucks are almost a full meter less wide than US ones. A german firetruck is only half a meter wider than a ford f450
The video is half an hour long and I really don’t feel like watching it all to find out something that could be said in one or two paragraphs of text, so I ignored it at first. As I expected, the video deals with a bunch of more or less relevant topics that you or OP didn’t mention at all. It actually is a bit interesting, I’ve watched a part of it, and I do have to admit that US fire trucks are bigger than those where I live. The problem is that their deadliness is a consequence of several other factors, and only indirectly of their size. What you and OP decided not to do is to communicate that point with any nuance, and all that I could read from your comments is that, by some logic, getting hit by a 10-metre truck is much safer than getting hit by a 15-metre truck. OP complained about the driver “right-hooking” the cyclist, you just said the trucks are too big, do I really have to watch a half an hour video to understand why your comments don’t sound nonsensical?
I appreciate you digging in and trying to get what I was saying. Bit of a nightmare here to keep up with which arguments ive made in the thread above the reply, as people ask the same things over and over.
I did say that firetrucks have a huge say in what kind of infrastructure can be built, and how big it’s allowed to be. Segregated bikes lanes for example are mostly forbidden by firedepts who can’t reach them with their massive trucks. There are no right hooks on segregated bike lanes.
I get your point though, apologies!
and they’re all probably as big as US vehicles.
Key word: “probably.” Which means you don’t actually know.
Chances are, you’re mistaken. But hey, post a pic and we’ll compare. I’m betting it’ll end up like this, though.
Any vehicle large enough to carry the necessary equipment and people for emergency services is going to be dangerous to pedestrians. Not sure what you’re trying to prove here.
Tell me youve never been in another country without telling me youve never been in another country.
Ambulances and firetrucks in Europe and Asia are smaller than most american pickup trucks.
Unless they have some sort of advanced materials science in other countries we don’t know about here in the US that makes them as light as cardboard, I’d bet my year’s salary you wouldn’t volunteer to let one hit you.
And yes, I have been out of the US. Shall I tell you what we say about those who “assume” things over here?
Clearly you didnt watch the video, because you couldn’t be more wrong. This is uniquely a north american thing
I agree that the US have way too many way too big trucks but this…
Ambulances and firetrucks in Europe and Asia are smaller than most american pickup trucks.
… is just wrong. I live in Germany and even small villages with only volunteer firefighters have full blown trucks way above 10 tons.
Most fire departments have something like this:
MAN TGM 18.330 Tank with 4,000 litres of water 18 tons total weight
More specialized departments close to industrial facilities, airports can be also much bigger. This one is currently the biggest weighting 52 tons.
Most fire departments have something like this:
Okay, but look how short that is compared to the American equivalent:
More specialized departments close to industrial facilities, airports can be also much bigger. This one is currently the biggest weighting 52 tons.
Okay, but look how short that is compared to the American equivalent:
The longer the truck is, the larger the turning radius it needs at intersections. The larger the intersections are, the faster regular cars drive through them. The faster the cars drive, the less safe it is for everybody else.
Deciding how large a vehicle a street should accommodate is called choosing the design vehicle. You pick that, and then the whole street is designed around it.
Guess what: here in the US, we often send even trucks like the second one I pictured – the one that’s even longer than your “industrial facility and airport truck” – to residential neighborhoods. Fire departments want to own trucks like that and we just fuckin’ let them. And that’s why our neighborhood streets are too often designed like goddamned airport runways!
Edit: Oh, and by the way…
I agree that the US have way too many way too big trucks but this…
Ambulances and firetrucks in Europe and Asia are smaller than most american pickup trucks. … is just wrong.
The MAN TGM 18.330 you cited has a wheelbase of 3,900/4,200/4,500 mm (source).
A Ford F-150 Super Crew with an 8’ bed and an F-250/F-350 Crew Cab with an 8’ bed, both of which are considered pretty typical American pickup trucks, have wheel bases of 163.7" (4158mm) and 176.0" (4470mm) respectively (source).
He’s playing a little fast and loose with the notion of “most,” but otherwise, no, he’s actually not wrong!
Weight doesn’t matter in this context? US firetrucks are almost a meter wider than german ones. A german firetruck is only about half a meter wider than a Ford F450.
And also firetrucks in US are first responders, they go before ambulances for most emergencies.
Here in 'Murrica, they send something like in the second photo when grandma falls in the bathroom.
Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. The truck in the first photo is smaller than the trucks my city fire department has. There’s a retirement community not far from where I live, and they send a ladder truck for medical emergencies there several times a week. I’m not really sure what use 4,000 liters of water would be when somebody is having a stroke.
No, you’re missing the point. It’s not about the emergency vehicle itself hitting pedestrians. It’s about the fact that having a very large vehicle, such as a ladder firetruck, as the “design vehicle” for the street forces engineers to design in a larger intersection turning radius, which increases regular cars’ speed through the intersection. That is what decreases pedestrian safety.
See also: https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/design-controls/design-vehicle/
That’s a much better, clearer way of stating the point. Thank you.
Ahhh okay, but you’re not trying to argue that paramedics should be on bicycles or taking public transit! That was the thing that puzzled me.
I think we could avoid a lot of the issues with pedestrians and cyclists getting hit by motor vehicles by getting rid of stroads and properly designing cities to separate streets and roads.
This is one of the most American things I’ve ever read.
If America the legal battle will cost the EMS a huge part of their budget.
Not even close. Notice the date it was posted.
150 shots with a .22 to hit the branch. I’m amazed he didn’t hit the fucking eagle.
150 shots to hit and cut the 4 inch (10 cm) of rope (I guess about 1/4 inch (6 mm) at least not more than 1/2 inch (1 cm) thick) between the eagle and the branch located 70 feet (20 m) above ground, so realistically 100 feet (30 m) distance with a rifle that is not his, i.e. without knowing the aiming point.
He didn’t hit the rope but the branch. If he was shooting for the rope he really would’ve shot the eagle.
Last Thursday, Jason Galvin used a .22-caliber rifle with a scope to fire 150 shots at the distant rope that was tangled around the eagle’s leg.
Yeah watch the video. It has a picture of the branch he shot down.
Ah ok. Interestingly, he shot the left part of the branch quite close to the eagle.
That made me swell with a sliver of American pride. Which is a pretty remarkable achievement this week.
That’s awesome! But as an outsider, the ambulance story still seems more “American” to me. There’s been a significant shift in how America is perceived here over the last 30 years.
I’m an outsider and I stand by the 4th of July vet shooting an eagle free story.
lacks guns and burgers but I’ll take it
The driver was distracted because he was eating a Big Mac while cleaning his pistol.
If only there had been a good ambulance with a gun.
GDP📈
This also feels like a good fit for Not The Onion.
