As an Austrian, this works good but not always so good as it should
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.
Lucifer! We can’t even keep cars from blasting down the shoulder.
It’s not just that we don’t enforce any of this crap but we actually encourage it.
Near me there’s one highway where they open the shoulder as a lane during rush hour, intentionally and legally, as the cheap way to widen the road. No one seems to care that it makes accidents bigger, blocks emergency vehicles and people get used to it and do it everywhere
So, that technique is actually an attempt to avoid a major problem in road development: you make a road, and now it’s easier to travel so people use it and it’s congested. So you make it bigger and traffic flows again, and so more people start using it and it gets congested. This keeps going until you have the freeways in Texas: 26 lanes of bad traffic.
Instead, one notion is to make the road wider only when it needs to be. It usually keeps traffic more mitigated for a few years before habits adjust.
The real fix is to start removing lanes from the highways. People will find other ways to get there and schedule travel as needed. Or they’ll move out of the suburbs so they can get to work, or, the most ridiculous notion, they’ll vote for the creation of the most basic of light rail systems.
Realistically they’ll bulldoze another 50 mile stretch of urban housing so people can drive easier for the 4 busy hours a day for the next few years, until we eventually entirely demolish the cities to make way for the roads that bring people into them.
wow. just wow. which likely increases the need for emergency vehicles on the road as well.
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.
Lol.
Sorry, it’s just… Have any of you seen LA freeway lane widths?
This doesn’t work everywhere. Love the idea, though!!
The system works for arbitrarily wide roads:
Over there they really do love to say ‘that’s brilliant but it’s absolutely impossible that would ever work over here in basically the same or easier situation bcs over here is not over there’.
The system works for arbitrarily wide roads
No, only up to 5 lanes, then you’re out of fingers.
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.
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!
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!
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
What would they do if it was five lanes each direction?
Everyone goes to the right, except the left most lane. They go to the left. This is independent of the number of lanes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
This would require people capable of thinking and having empathy for others
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?
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.
I’ve seen this happen, and it almost looked like that exact spot. I feel like this is between Berlin and Wittstock.
A+ happy German narration.
But why do they need 2 lanes?
Do you see 2 white lines inside the empty space? No? Then it’s not two lanes being kept free. Everyone is just at the very edge of their own lane. Sometimes lanes are just wide, it doesn’t usually look like this.
wait hold on. i don’t see an emergency vehicle. you just do this because traffic is stopped?
Yes
this makes my “i must sort my wires into different lengths and colors” gland so very happy. i must learn your ways.
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?
Yeah same in France
Same way as in statesia. It wouldn’t
Yes, we are taught to move left or right to create a middle lane during a traffic jam.
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In the picture the right most cars have switched to the shoulder to make the Rettungsgasse big. I forgot the exact reasons but the shoulder is not used for emergency vehicles on purpose.
I forgot the exact reasons but the shoulder is not used for emergency vehicles on purpose.
The shoulder has no shoulder. Probably not safe.
It’s bcs it’s intended for ‘emergency stops’ (including ppl going for a piss), ‘emergency vehicles’ (ambulances, etc) have a safer & more predictable way down the middle of the road away from the edges of the road.
There shouldn’t be anyone in the middle of the road, but there could be someone on the emergency lane.
It’s not just the stopped cars that might be on the shoulder / emergency lane, but it’s also that there might be more loose stones there and in winter snow and ice. The middle of the road is then safer.
Do Germans regularly piss by the side of the road? In America it’s a great way of ending up on a sex offenders registry.
In Europe usually you get a fine at most. Imagine being on a road trip with a 3yo in the back, if they say they have to pee it’s not like "I hope this queue moves in the next 30 minutes, it’s RIGHT NOW! So off on the shoulder they go.
