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r/fuckcars / Not Just Bikes / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design
Imagine being such a miserable cunt that you can find things to bitch about fucking fire departments, who are one of the last public institutions people still have trust in. I also highly doubt that fire departments are what causes streets to be wider, I'm sure it's a litany of things, and probably varies state by state. I don't know how people can take a clown like this seriously when his thesis is "the fire department is getting people killed".
Anytime California is brought up for anything what you need to remember is that California is so deep in a hole that it has dug itself that nothing will ever be built that isn't some tranny shit. Between the environmental regulations, spineless politicians, belligerent asshole population, general high cost of everything, and the astronomical level of state debt it's no wonder that everything in California is fucked beyond belief.
Waiting here for the beast to be starved and finally shed all the gibs to blacks, trannies and illegals, but our actual infrastructure will collapse before that happens I'm afraid.
You sit in on some meetings and there's always someone who will scream "Black trans POCs who are handicapable are worth more than your bridges bigot!" and everyone around just nods and proceeds to not fund things that we all benefit from.
Here, have some more needles and free pop-up tents I bought in bulk off Amazon.
This isn't super relevant to this thread but it is a little bit and I've gotta vent because I'm still mad.
A few years ago a change to traffic law passed in my country, it says that if you're driving and overtaking road lice, you have to pass at least 1.5m away from them. It's seriously dumb because it's not like you have an extensible 1.5m long ruler on your car's passenger door, it's like setting speed limits in a world where speedometers don't exist, there's no way for you, the cyclist you're passing, or a potential cop watching you actually measuring the distance, so the best you can do is just go fully into the oncoming lane.
Anyway, yesterday I was driving home and I came up to a cycloid on a narrow winding road. Normally I'd just pass him by less than the mandated 1.5m, except there was a cop car behind me. I spent at least 20 minutes doing about 25 in a 90 zone because I didn't want to get a ticket. Eventually even the popo got sick of it and passed both me and the biker. Jesus fuck, I know how the main character in Falling Down felt at the start of the movie, I nearly started chewing on the steering wheel.
But even then for journeys of greater than 200 miles or so a plane is still faster, and I'm willing to bet it's also probably cheaper. Now 200 miles may seem like a long ways to go until you bring places like America and Australia into the conversation. Unless you have essentially a Shinkansen a plane will still beat you and even then the Shinkansen works as well as it does in large part due to the oriental culture and work etethic.
For those kind of distances high speed rail might be faster for the entire trip. The plane ride itself will be faster, but the partial trip problem is more significant. You gotta be at the airport, which is usually a bit outside the city, some hours before to get through security, and at the destination you also have to go through the airport, potentially pick up luggage, and get to your destination. Train stations are more central and more accessible.
Depending on your trip it might end up faster. Once the train ride takes more than, say, four hours it probably changes to plane being faster, though.
We want firefighters to be able to do their jobs and save us from fires but we also don't want lots of people getting injured or killed by cars so please fire departments work with advocates on this, otherwise I'm going to have to be the one to write the song "Fuck the Fire Department" and trust me nobody wants to hear an old white guy rapping.
Link in comment He then blames pedestrian deaths on wide fast roads:
Advocates, urban planners, and some of the better Traffic Engineers are raising the alarm, pun intended, that one of the biggest factors that makes the US more dangerous than other countries is street design. American roads are too wide, vehicle speeds are too fast, and American street design is fundamentally dangerous.
Here's Seattle's (a city that implements Jason's preferred road design strategies) pedestrian deaths over time: Source(Archive)
Seattle started implementing "Vision Zero" (i.e. road diets, lower speed limits, etc.) in 2015. Deaths started increasing around the same time. How could this be?
That's because the real reason for the higher deaths isn't because trucks are larger or because the roads are wider or faster, but because there are now a lot of drug zombies that wander into the streets at night. The main thesis of the video is that American fire trucks are larger than other countries.
For example, here's a Japanese fire truck:
and a British fire truck:
Which are both dwarfed by an American fire trucks:
Oh.
The retard didn't even bother to google "types of fire trucks". If he had, he would have learned that fire departments all around the world have different sized vehicles for different needs and they don't need to send a giant ladder truck to a heart attack call or a motorcycle to a skyscraper fire. Source(Archive)
I'm sure I'll get exactly those same kind of comments on this video too because I've received them many times before. I'll be dismissed as an ignorant YouTuber despite the fact that I involved multiple experts in the research for this video.
I talked to Scott Brody who conducted a master's thesis on street design and is now writing a book on fire access in smaller streets
Now, I could end this post here because the entire premise is wrong, but let's continue. Next he says:
American fire trucks are absolutely huge compared to their international counterparts. This means that even quiet residential streets also need to be absolutely huge in order to fit them and yet decades of research has proven that wider streets lead to higher speeds and more fatal crashes.
First of all, most residential streets are not wide enough to turn a fire truck around in:
(Location is a random suburb of Houston)
Even the small European/Japanese trucks that he gushes about (later in the video) would struggle.
The road in your stock footage is an arterial, not a residential street: He then talks about cases where fire departments have told urban planners to fuck off. Nothing interesting in this segment except he bitches about Canadian firefighters stopping a bike lane because their trucks are too large to drive down the narrowed road while showing a picture of a "small" Canadian firetruck:
It's slightly larger than the European trucks shown later in the video, but smaller than the stereotypical fire truck he spends most of the video complaining about. Next he complains that most of the calls firefighters respond to are EMS and they therefore don't need to send an engine:
He complains that they're sending large trucks for emergencies that don't require them:
If you're asking why they're sending fire trucks to all these emergencies, the reason is that a lot of places in America don't have as many ambulances as they do fire trucks so when an old woman has a heart attack a fir truck is likely to be the closest vehicle to respond and I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure that typically treating an old woman for a heart attack does not actually require a 1000 gallons of water.
No, but if the ambulances and smaller fire trucks are already out on calls, they have to send whatever they have available. They can't wait until the other firefighter/paramedic is done. The roads have to be designed around the worst case scenario, not the best case. Actually, he did figure out that there are different types of fire trucks, but only in the Netherlands:
Incidentally, there is a difference between a fire engine and a fire truck. Fire engines are primarily designed for firefighting they carry water pumps, hoses, and water tanks to fight fires while fire trucks are equipped with long aerial ladders or platforms and are primarily designed for rescue operations and providing access to high places but colloquially most Americans say fire trucks to mean both so that's what I'm going to use in this video.
He immediately follows this up with a reddit-tier rant about Imperial units.
The British who colloquially use fire engine for both can get upset and write me a strongly worded letter in response. I also apologize in advance for the lack of metric units in this video. Yes, imperial units are ridiculous but we're talking about America here so get prepared for feet, gallons, and Diet Coke hamburgers per bald eagle.
The British also use gallons and miles, Jason. He then says that paramedics should use motorcycles:
What do they do if they need to transport an injured patient, Jason?
To justify this, he compares the entire country's fire response times (including rural areas) to that of Daytona Beach's motorcycles that they use during special events:
There's even precedent for this in North America. Daytona Beach uses emergency response motorcycles and they have an average response time of 3 minutes the rest of the US which uses large trucks averages 7 minutes because it is always going to take longer for a giant firetruck and reminder that's a 40ft truck carrying a 100t ladder or 1,000 gallons of water to make it through a crowded city than a motorcycle but fire departments routinely argue that we can't build any infrastructure that might delay those big trucks even more.
Due to traffic congestion created by special events in our city (Biketoberfest, Speed Weeks, Bike Week, Springbreak, and Black College Reunion) fire/rescue apparatus response was hindered by pedestrian and motor vehicle gridlock. Motor Medics were a logical choice to reduce response times and improve service to our visitors and residents.
Also, Daytona Beach is a sprawling Floridian suburb. It's not a crowded city. Next he says that fire trucks can drive down the bike lane so they don't slow down response times. He doesn't explain why they couldn't drive down that part of the road if it was a car lane (I guess because because no one uses the bike lanes, even in the Netherlands?): Finally, we see a European truck:
and a Japanese truck:
He then says that they're built off of standard chassis, unlike American trucks which use custom chassis:
In the US and Canada fire trucks are typically built on a large custom chassis which allows purchasers to keep adding adding more and more features as the trucks get bigger and bigger. European and Asian fire trucks are typically built on standardized commercial chassis from local companies like Mercedes, Renault, Scania, or in this case Isuzu. These are basically regular commercial trucks that have been adapted for use in firefighting. Using a standardized chassis makes the trucks cheaper and more maneuverable and they also have better crash safety too.
but first he shows a European fire truck that is larger than the Canadian truck he complained about earlier (with no comment):
His photo is just cherry-picking. Here's some photos showing the loadout of a large American fire truck (note not all pictures are from the same truck):
Next he shows a comment from an American firefighter explaining exactly why the truck is as big as it is, but dismisses it because a smug German in training to be a paramedic replied telling the firefighter that he's wrong:
When you see the absurd size of American fire trucks discussed online there will be some American firefighter in the comments who tries to set everyone straight by typing a laundry list of things that American fire trucks carry justifying why their trucks need to be so big which is then followed by a German firefighter saying "What the hell are you talking about? We carry all that stuff too but our trucks aren't enormous."
As a firefighter in America I'd like to give my take and hopefully clear things up here.
I understand all departments are different and have different needs and capabilities depending on what you have in your area. Some being rural, some being in the city, some being somewhere in between.
My engine is 31'9" in length. 11'9" tall. We have 2,135 total feet of hose on board. We have 1032 gallons of water on board. We can flow 1500 gallons of water a minute at 150 PSI.
In my department, every compartment of a our engines are pretty much the same all around.
On the driver side, our first compartment is called the "Engineers compartment." This compartment has different nozzles/extra nozzles that we can use to help fight the fire. Different nozzles can help I'm different ways. We can change/ swap nozzles out that can give more reach, and more GPM. We also have attachments that can allow us to make foam. In this compartment, we have hose that are 25' in length (in case the hydrant is near by) so we don't have to pull another line off the back that is much longer. We keep a tool box that has standard tools. We have a water cooler, scene tape, duct tape, markers, ect.
Our second compartment is our tool compartment. We have everything from pry bars, flat head axe, pick head axe, sledge hammer, lock out kit (to open locked car doors), and other tools.
We have a 3rd compartment that has chainsaws (to cut trees) vent saw (chain saw that is meant to cut holes in roofs to help with ventilation on a house fire. Oil dry for car wrecks, push brooms for cleaning a scene up (works to help spread the oil dry), tarps, tubs for salvaging things (typically on a house fire), forestry rakes, extra oil and fuel for saws. We have k12 saw and extra blades for it. Ground monitor, portable hydrant, ect.
Our back compartment, we have a fan (for ventilation on CO calls and for pushing smoke out of a home). We have a junction box that's pretty much a really long extension cord. Portable scene lights. Hydrant bag (bag that has tools to turn hydrant on and flow water) this bag also has adapters and hydrant wrenches, spanned wrenches, flash light, adapters, gate valves, ect.
We have a ladder compartment that has two 10' pike poles. Two 6' NY hooks. Back board. 24' extension ladder. 14' roof ladder. 10' attic ladder.
We have a compartment with extrication equipment. We have a spreader (jaws of life). Cutter (to cut cars open). Long and short Ram with support (push dash). Chains for stabilizing a car. Window cutter (cuts windshields primarily). We have a hydraulic power generator to give power to cutters, spreaders and rams. We also have airbags that allow us to raise a car if a patient is trapped under the car. We can also use the airbags to lift the car and place wood blocks under the car to help stabilize. We carry 20 blocks and more other wedges (called cribbing). We have ratchet straps and plenty of webbing.
Next compartment we have medical equipment. We have a Zoll monitor that can give us vitals and shock a patient in cardiac arrest. We have medical bag with IV kits, life saving drugs, gauze and other life saving equipment. We have also an airway bag that contains everything from a nasal cannula to even where we can intubate a patient if needed.
We are all Hazmat Technicians in my department. We also specialize in technical rescue. These are very few of the many things we have on our Engines. About 95% of our calls are EMS related. And 5% are Fire related.
We respond to all EMS calls. Reason being is we can just have extra hands for the EMS crew. A lot of times, the EMS crew is far away. If we respond and are on scene within 5 minutes, we can get a lot done with the patient before the ambulance arrives. We care for the patient and a lot of times, the patient is ready for transport by the time the ambulance arrives on scene.
Everything on our trucks are needed and vital. We pretty much can handle nearly everything with what we have. Everything we have as far as space for tools is jam packed in there. Every bit of room we have is used.
To end this long comment, we hope not to use anything and pray for the safety of our citizens, however, if anything happens, we are there and are ready.
Thats a nice list, but I have to say, the HLF in Germany can do ALL of this as well and is way way smaller than an American Firetruck, we may don't have as many ladders on a truck but we have 1 modular and one longer ladder. For everything that is taller than the ladders can reach the ladder truck is responding.
Our HLF got a tank of 1.600L (423 Gallons) of Water with us and 120L (31 Gallons) of foam concentrate on the truck.
The ladder truck got (if it's new) a second joint up front to get in the basket in even tighter spaces.
I am a EMT and worked for 2 Years as one. I just started the 3 Year School education the be a Notfallsanitäter (Paramedic) in Frankfurt. I am in the Volunteer fire department (not in Frankfurt) but I am worked many times with the firefighters in Frankfurt, they got Drugs on there Firetrucks as well and got a Paramedic on board but the don't respond to medical calls on a regular basses, the dispatcher only dispatches them if the got a ongoing resuscitation on the phone or an Ambulance is calling for help at a resuscitation.
I think the big difference is that we also got a small car (7 of that in Frankfurt) wich is called NEF wich is transporting a Doctor to the Cene, the driver of the Doc is a Paramedic, so you got 4 Persons on Cene: 1 EMT, 2 Paramedics, 1 Doctor. Just so I know, do you got something like this?
To come to an end: We can do as much as you can with our HLF, and the trucks are way way smaller
Note that the German only talked about water tanks, ladders, and drugs, he ignored the rest of the American's comment. Jason thinks that European engines run at redline all the time to be efficient:
American fire trucks are also overspecced. While a European engine will have just enough horsepower for the pumps an American engine will typically be more than 20% higher horsepower than required which makes the size of the truck much bigger.
They're really living up to the US stereotype of getting the biggest and most overpowered truck you can get just for that one time you might actually need it
We also hear that American fire trucks have to be so big because of the length of the Ladders because of course American cities have big buildings that need big ladders. Look, if you go to any city with skyscrapers like Tokyo or Hong Kong I'm sure you'll see the same thing. Oh wait, no actually they use the same size fire trucks that the rest of the world uses. Look at how tiny this fire truck looks in Tokyo.
European and Asian fire trucks have ladders that reach just as high even though the trucks themselves are shorter and have a smaller turning radius and what's absurd about this is that even if larger ladders are required where there are tall buildings why are the exact same fire trucks used in suburbia where there's no nothing but single family homes?
That cute little Japanese truck totally has a tall ladder. Some Japanese fire trucks do have long ladders, but they look like this:
i.e. the same size as the "American fire truck".
Also, long ladders are useful for low rise buildings: Back to complaining about big trucks:
Giant trucks mean the streets need to be too big but the trucks themselves are more dangerous to people on the street too. Like all big trucks they're heavier, less maneuverable, and take longer to stop. Many of them also have lower visibility making it harder for the driver to see people who are walking or cycling and if you hit someone with a fire truck who do you call another fire truck?
Unlike pickup trucks, both American and European fire trucks are cabovers and have good front visibility. There is no significant difference between the two vehicles; both rely on mirrors/cameras to see their sides and back. American firetrucks are less safe than European trucks because they're worse at autocross:
In 2005 the Discovery Channel, aired an episode of of Mean Machines where a US fire truck used on a US military base in the UK was put into head-to-head competition with a local UK fire truck they had them run a mock obstacle course to see which one was more maneuverable. It was embarrassing look at. This a professional firetruck driver is running over children, sorry I mean cones, left and right because these vehicles are insane. Meanwhile, the European truck navigated the course with ease. It wasn't even a contest.
He then talks about how European sirens sound better and are less annoying:
I just need to say that European sirens are better. They use a lower-pitched frequency which means that they can both be heard further away and they cause less hearing damage.
(Modern sirens can play both types of sound and hearing damage is more due to volume, not frequency). Very mad:
These differences in firetruck design are often presented by American fire departments as a funny quirk of how different countries do things differently but of course it's not so funny when the fire trucks have such big implications.
Apparently, Firetrucks for lanes to be wider which makes cars drive faster:
The fire department requires all roads in new developments to be 30% wider than the code minimum of 20 ft so every street even residential streets end up with 13 ft freeway size lanes in each direction and for the benefit of most my audience who uses metric that means car lanes that are almost 4 m wide. These wider Lanes lead people to drive faster which means more deadlier car crashes.
San Francisco doesn't have any new roads being paved and the city is another one that loves to do road diets (narrowing and removing lanes). Just a flat out lie:
Roundabouts are almost non-existent in the US unless you're in Carmel, Indiana or something but they're extremely common in Europe because traffic flows better and they're often safer than signalized intersections.
He then complains about fire departments making sure that roundabouts can handle their trucks, like the one in Carmel he shows Stock footage of:
The concrete apron helps trucks drive through them. He recognizes that this exists in Europe, but fails to notice it in his own clips:
The European roundabout he showed is ironically a complex, signalized one:
He then complains about the US having too many stoplights per mile, using Manhattan as the example (he also says that the Netherlands has a higher density, but that's obviously not true):
Remember, this is the same guy who complains about suburbs having too few lights because it makes it difficult for pedestrians to cross major roads. If we didn't have cars we wouldn't need as many fire trucks:
Here's the really sad part. 5.3% of all emergencies that fire trucks respond to in the US are motor vehicle crashes. That's more than building fires so these wide streets allow fire trucks to quickly respond to the car crashes that are caused by these wide streets and since fire trucks are so big roads need to be made bigger which makes more people crash their cars which means more fire trucks are needed which means we need to build more wide roads and you might say well this keeps the fire department in business but that's not the way things work fire departments are just a cost for cities. Nobody wants this!
Jason then talked to a fellow urbanist who suggested that the need for firetrucks could be reduced by adding hoses, standpipes, sprinklers, and AEDs to buildings.
Does this dude ever go outinside?
Instead of requiring an entire street to be wide enough for a fire truck to park while cars can pass the city can just have emergency spaces every so often often like is common in the Netherlands.
What happens if your building is on fire and it isn't one of the ones with a plaza? Just block the street and cause congestion:
If for some reason emergency services do need to set up outside one of these designated spaces just let them block the street knowing that cars can pass by just going around the block. We need to accept that drivers can be mildly inconvenienced when there's a serious emergency.
He later talks about how pedestrian plazas don't slow down emergency vehicles:
Pedestrianized streets are amazing. They make for lively public spaces that are safe and comfortable for people walking and cycling and yet every single time I talk about carfree streets someone responds with "that's stupid, what about emergency vehicles?"" and I'm just like "carfree does not mean firetruck free". Of course, emergency vehicles will still be allowed here and in fact they get through faster on a pedestrian street because there isn't much traffic.
Like a firetruck will actually to blitz through this instead of taking a longer route: He then complains that the Baltimore fire department made a video showing that the newly installed bike lanes slowed down their trucks:
Jason of course blames the parking:
You can see how they're having difficulty putting the stabilizers out for the ladder trucks. Wow this is terrible and look at this firetruck having problems getting through. The driver can't even open his door to get out of the truck! If only the street weren't so narrow because of the bike lane except look at those videos again what is getting in the way of the fire truck? It's the cars.
but he misses that the parking was there before and the bike lane wasn't. The residents want the parking and the fire truck, they don't want the bike lane. He then says that you can't blame road diets for slowing down fire trucks because they also get stuck on highways which don't have traffic calming:
The highway in his clip is I-5 through downtown Seattle, a highway that has not been expanded in decades despite massive population growth thanks to the urbanists on Seattle City Council and in the Washington state government. Muh Induced Demand:
We also know from decades of research that wide roads and street parking induces demand for more driving which causes more traffic that fills up the roads
He then goes on a crazy rant with animated voices (starts at 21:38 if you want to listen):
This is what annoys me so much about the objections from fire departments. When there's a proposal to install bike lanes, the fire department is there! We can't do that our fire trucks won't fit down the street! When the cities want to narrow streets or install traffic coming to make the road safer the fire department is there! We can't do that it'll slow down our fire trucks! But when American cities want to remove street parking like was done here in Amsterdam where's the fire department? Why aren't they out there saying yes we want to remove street parking too because parked cars make it harder to do our job or when cities want to build dedicated transit lanes bus rapid transit or new tram lines where's the fire department? Why aren't they out there saying "yes, transit lanes could become our emergency express lanes speeding up response times"? And when cities want to build car-free streets and reduce the number of cars on the road through congestion charges or restrictions on through traffic where's the fire department why aren't they out there saying "yes, cars are the number one thing that prevents us from getting to emergencies on time. A network of car-free streets would be perfect for us to avoid traffic?" Yet somehow instead of coming out in support of stuff like this the fire department only seems to show up when someone threatens the car-centric status quo.
Maybe that's because cars aren't the reason why fire trucks are slowed down? Jason is mad no one respects urbanist YouTubers in the real world:
When advocates point this out they're often belittled by the fire departments who tell us we have no idea what we're talking about as they refuse to even acknowledge the international examples of how it's done better without the dangerous streets or they'll give us a patronizing line like that's there and this is here different environments call for different equipment which is the laziest possible response.
You really telling me that this environment and this environment somehow call for exactly the same kind of truck and that truck for both those environments somehow also needs to be twice as big as the fire trucks you'll find in Europe? Really? Come on!
They don't. This is the type of firetruck common in the left area:
and this is the type of fire truck common in the right area:
I'm sure I'll get exactly those same kind of comments on this video too because I've received them many times before. I'll be dismissed as an ignorant YouTuber despite the fact that I involved multiple experts in the research for this video.
We want firefighters to be able to do their jobs and save us from fires but we also don't want lots of people getting injured or killed by cars so please fire departments work with advocates on this, otherwise I'm going to have to be the one to write the song "Fuck the Fire Department" and trust me nobody wants to hear an old white guy rapping.
Air brakes make fire trucks dangerous: This is blatantly false. Only large ladder trucks with trailers have tiller drivers: Good luck, Jason will delete them all: There's a negative downvoted comment in the /r/fuckcars comment section(archive):
In my experience the Switch is for entertaining yourself while you wait for your train/bus to arrive. I've recently started a new job and I have to wait for a full fucking hour for my train home to arrive and that's when I've taken a detour to the local convenience store to buy something to eat when I'm waiting, and the station doesn't even have proper seats but those thin things are so uncomfortable that I'd rather sit on the floor next to them. It shouldn't go unsaid that outside of cities most services run hourly at best and you waste so much time sitting around that it pushes you into getting some personal transport harder than anything else could.
This is both 50% wider (at least) and infinitely more comfortable that the shit that passed for seating in that fucking station.
The place where trains make sense is replacing short-haul flights between regional metropolitan areas and moving lots of people around urban-suburban areas.
Trains are also good for regional services in semi-rural areas, provided that they run at least hourly since a 2 or 3 car multiple unit can carry a lot more people than a bus can with far better ergonomics.
I would agree with that, I probably low balled the train tbh. Although if you live in the midwest (and I do) you're talking about major cities that are 300 or more miles away and nothing in between them worth building HSR to. The only cities closer than that are typically separated by water or are shipping ports in which case lol boats will already be going there directly anyways.
For those kind of distances high speed rail might be faster for the entire trip. The plane ride itself will be faster, but the partial trip problem is more significant. You gotta be at the airport, which is usually a bit outside the city, some hours before to get through security, and at the destination you also have to go through the airport, potentially pick up luggage, and get to your destination. Train stations are more central and more accessible.
Depending on your trip it might end up faster. Once the train ride takes more than, say, four hours it probably changes to plane being faster, though.
There's always the car option, which usually works best in a days' drive (a plane can do 1000 miles easy, a car not so much). And of course, a car solves the last mile problem.
Seattle started implementing "Vision Zero" (i.e. road diets, lower speed limits, etc.) in 2015. Deaths started increasing around the same time. How could this be?
That's because the real reason for the higher deaths isn't because trucks are larger or because the roads are wider or faster, but because there are now a lot of drug zombies that wander into the streets at night.
On a broader scale, wouldn't that indicate that post-2010 roads what with "traffic calming", bicycle lanes, and increased urbanization all increase pedestrian deaths?
Good, especially for lying, grifting fucks like him. I don't advocate for peoples' houses to burn down, but in light of this video, I may have to make an exception for that.
On the subject of ladders, a long ladder helped saved this construction worker from a fully engulfed burning building (a mid-rise bughive under construction that urbanists are so fond of--Houston, 2013).
Luckily Houston does in fact have ladder trucks, not toy trucks, and the two are pulled away safely just seconds before the building starts to collapse. As a result, the foreman was treated for minor burns and released within hours, as opposed to being dead.
Luckily Houston does in fact have ladder trucks, not toy trucks, and the two are pulled away safely just seconds before the building starts to collapse. As a result, the foreman was treated for minor burns and released within hours, as opposed to being dead.
This isn't super relevant to this thread but it is a little bit and I've gotta vent because I'm still mad.
A few years ago a change to traffic law passed in my country, it says that if you're driving and overtaking road lice, you have to pass at least 1.5m away from them. It's seriously dumb because it's not like you have an extensible 1.5m long ruler on your car's passenger door, it's like setting speed limits in a world where speedometers don't exist, there's no way for you, the cyclist you're passing, or a potential cop watching you actually measuring the distance, so the best you can do is just go fully into the oncoming lane.
Anyway, yesterday I was driving home and I came up to a cycloid on a narrow winding road. Normally I'd just pass him by less than the mandated 1.5m, except there was a cop car behind me. I spent at least 20 minutes doing about 25 in a 90 zone because I didn't want to get a ticket. Eventually even the popo got sick of it and passed both me and the biker. Jesus fuck, I know how the main character in Falling Down felt at the start of the movie, I nearly started chewing on the steering wheel.
I'm sure I'll get exactly those same kind of comments on this video too because I've received them many times before. I'll be dismissed as an ignorant YouTuber despite the fact that I involved multiple experts in the research for this video.
Jason's experts: Some retards with an opinion
Road Guy Rob's experts: The actual people, planners, engineers etc. who built the infrastructure
Perfect that he mentioned Carmel, Indiana because Rob made videos on it that are way better than anything Jason's made. For example, in this one he interviews the freakin' mayor himself. Has Jason Slaughter ever toned down his bitching enough to get a politician willing to sit down and talk with him?
Oh but I'm sorry, Jason ignores RGR because he is a "car apologist."
It sounds like he tried to talk to some firefighters (presumably in Canada back when he was an “advocate”, whatever that means), but it didn’t go well, judging by the extremely passionate rant at 21:38.
I wonder how well he’d take a firefighter telling him how to make YouTube videos.
He then says that paramedics should use motorcycles:
What do they do if they need to transport an injured patient, Jason?
To justify this, he compares the entire country's fire response times (including rural areas) to that of Daytona Beach's motorcycles that they use during special events:
Fire hose reels and racks are interesting pieces of fire protection equipment. The idea is this: in the event of a fire, building occupants can quickly reach the hose cabinet, extend the hose, and turn on the water to extinguish the fire. It’s a pretty simple concept that’s gotten a bit more complicated in recent years.
Once upon a time, these fire hose stations featured in many buildings, but now they see far more limited use. After reflecting on their safety, effectiveness, and the training needed to fight a fire, the fire protection industry now relies less on occupant-use fire hoses.
... As we’ve explained, fire hose stations are used less and less because they are often poorly maintained and the intended users are poorly trained—if at all. It’s often better to leave a fire to the professionals, instruct occupants to escape safely, and allow automatic sprinkler systems to do their job.
There's always the car option, which usually works best in a days' drive (a plane can do 1000 miles easy, a car not so much). And of course, a car solves the last mile problem.
Yeah, car has the lowest last mile problem. I want to use high speed rail more often since its comfortable and often faster than the car (the trains here can go up to 300 kph, which they don't often do, but if they do its nice), but it's also fucking expensive. I went to a city about 450 km away on Friday with my gf. Wanted to take the train since it saves an hour of travel time on that connection, but several issues: the train is less flexible, I'm limited to specific departure times. The train is also extremely expensive. 450 km is a bit more than half a tank of gas on my car, and even at the current gas prices that's about 70 bucks worth of gas for the trips to and from.
Train tickets were like 100 bucks per person per trip.
Look, I want to use the train, but Holy fuck, it costs this much and is incredibly unreliable. I did half the return trip by train, and half the connections were cancelled or completely full. Spent 60 bucks for a one hour train ride. It's still pretty sweet to go 300 kph this smoothly.
/edit: I know German ambulances are usually a bit underpowered (as in, they're based on a commercial vehicle and use the smallest engine available) to prevent drivers from going too hard and reckless under the stress of an emergency. Particularly less experienced drivers would tend to rush too much and endanger themselves and everyone around them, so the departments try to ensure that they calm down a bit. Often an older experienced guy with them who tells them to go slower and opens the department gates slowly so the younger drivers' adrenaline gets curbed a bit.
The faggot completely missed what the fire departments actually complain about (and the city, too!) - roads so narrow that with parking there’s basically a single lane left. An emergency response there is slower and will block a traffic route.
I know tons of suburbs with quite narrow roads: because the houses have longer driveways and adequate parking the road has no cars on it- and and emergency response turns it into a one lane road which is handleable.
Of course, most of the problems they’re trying to “solve” are caused by the same damn density they worship so fucking hard.
Also almost all USA fire trucks aren’t that custom built - they’re on a standard Oshkosh or similar heavy-doody truck chassis and customizable to the needs of the department at the time. Rural areas? Lots of chainsaws and debris removal equipment. Urban? Jaws of life and other “separate the faggots stuck together” type dealios.
And a proper vehicle setup will always look a bit empty because that’s how you do it. A contractor can filled to the brim with tools is inefficient- just like a closet so stuffed with clothes that you can’t move the hangers.
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I haven't seen a new hookenlatter truck in, well, decades. But every firehouse that has one keeps it running because it's fucking badass and everyone wants to drive tiller.
Remember that an important part of a fire department's duty roster is parades and shit - nobody wants a Kei truck in a parade or at a funeral - but what's this? All searches for "fire truck funeral" are bringing up .... non tiller trucks?
more on tiller trucks from, you know, the faggots who build and use them - of course, they're niggerfaggots and don't know shit, living in such rural alt-right hellholes like ... San Francisco, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.