Ja.

~~Das ist der Weg~~

This is the way, ja?

This happened to me once. It was a main road with heavy traffic. I pulled over to the right to let the ambulance pass, but because of traffic, I was effectively sitting on the right lane. Apparently the ambulance wanted to move to the right lane because they were gonna turn right at the corner up ahead. I felt like an asshole because to everyone else on the road, it looked like I intentionally blocked the ambulance. And the siren blaring right behind you while the driver is blasting the horn is very stressful.

nyc is a crazy city

That's how it's supposed to work in the US too. Maybe it depends on the state but in MN at least it's illegal to fail to pull over for emergency vehicles. If you see any emergency vehicle on the road running with lights on then you are supposed to stop and pull off to the side so that they can have the whole road.

The video in the OP looks nuts to me too. I've never seen people fail to pull over for an emergency vehicle in my area.

So I actually experienced one of these on 64W between VA Beach and Richmond. It was amazing how everyone including myself just instinctively moved to the sides of the road. It's not a hard concept it just takes cooperation.

You are being rescued. Please do not resist.

Mostly the French

Shitty solution to a shitty problem in my opinion. Quite often patients are indeed put into the ambulance immediately. Ambulances also have tons of medical equipment, none of which you can fit on a bike, obviously. Then there's the question of paramedic safety, especially given how many road accidents there are in the US. Plus, that would be a major cost for healthcare providers. Instead of 2 paramedics, you'd need 3 or 4, since they can't go solo, again due to safety concerns. Overall this isn't something we should be looking for alternative solutions to. You can't keep making workarounds for systemic issues, like horrible road/traffic design or society being severely uneducated.

theres people on it? Like regularly?

Also i doubt an ambulance would even fit in most places, chances are it's going to get stuck, immediately.

It's not just corporations. It's the individual over the collective. And that is just the nature of certain societies, specifically more competitive societies. In India for example, the mindset of everyone in traffic is 'me over others' - fuck everyone else, i grab what space I can get. If I don't, the next fucker will. Like if it starts raining, your 1 hour trip is now 3 hours, not 1.5 hours because there will be a jam at every intersection in the city. There are just so many people on the road and infrastructure (and society / government at large) that hasn't lent itself to cooperation but rather competition. It becomes their mindset, it becomes everyone's mindset. That is why many from that region turn right politically. I bet it's the same for many Latin countries.

As if the usa is the only country in the world with congested rush hour traffic. I've been in streets that were way more tightly packed + chaotic than this and people would still clear a path for vehicles with sirens. The emergency vehicle would only be able to go 20 to 30 kmh without a motorcycle escort, but that's still significantly faster than what we're seeing here.

What we're seeing in this video, is that (some) vehicles that are directly in front of the ambulance move out of the way, but vehicles that are a tiny bit further ahead, don't even try. If a vehicle that is directly in front of the ambulance can move out of the way, then a vehicle that is 30 places ahead, is also able to move out of the way, but they don't even try ... What should happen is that as soon as drivers hear a siren, they should start looking for where it's coming from and then clear a path, and drivers should also especially not be driving into the path that others are clearing. Instead it seems like these drivers wait till the siren is right behind them and only then some start to move out of the way.

Looking for excuses in American exceptionalism reads like a case of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". This particular problem is something that can be easily improved upon by a public awareness campaign and some light fines for those that keep obstructing after the campaign has been running for some time. But what's obviously even easier than that, is finding an excuse to continue doing nothing about the problem.

There's congestion in German cities too. The point isn't to drive away. During rettungsgasse, nobody goes anywhere. They just make way by stopping to the sides.

The problem in NY is that the cars are too big for the lanes to do that.

Definitely affectation. I suspect the strong German accent is as well. His vocabulary is too good for it.