cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/93717
Is this fuck cars or fuck the us?
Show of hands, who pays for ambulances regardless of why?
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.
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.
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 (video from “not just bikes”)
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.
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.
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.
Pro gamer move
“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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
That’s an interesting business strategy, I’ll give 'em that
