Ambulance hits cyclist, rushes him to hospital, then sticks him with $1,800 bill - eviltoast
      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 hours ago

        A hypercompetent autocract whose only concern was the perfect management of his city was the only unrealistic thing about Discworld.

  • Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Bikes: a transportation vehicle with health benefits. Ambulance: a transportation vehicle for the unwell.

    Bikes are the natural enemy of the ambulance. A war between the bike clan and the ambulance clan is on the horizon.

  • Murvel@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    9 hours ago

    It’s called a ‘for profit business’, look it up, people!

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    edit-2
    10 hours ago

    they couldve gotten way more than $1,800 if they hit a few more cyclists on the way. theres plenty of room in the back of an ambulance

  • fl42v@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    52
    ·
    13 hours ago

    That’s an interesting business strategy, I’ll give 'em that

    • grue@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      15 hours ago

      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.

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        42
        ·
        14 hours ago

        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.

        • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          7 hours ago

          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.

      • rbn@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        10 hours ago

        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.

          • Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            35 minutes ago

            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.

          • dankm@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            4 hours ago

            Fun fact, many if not most of those ambulances are made in Canada, and not the USA.

          • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            7 hours ago

            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.

              • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                32 minutes ago

                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.

            • bstix@feddit.dk
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              4 hours ago

              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.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      14 hours ago

      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.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Look at the picture in the article and read the story. The biker was trying to ride past the ambulance near the curb as the ambulance was turning.

    The biker felt entitled to do whatever he wanted instead of waiting his turn and got himself ran over.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      15 minutes ago

      You’re right, this fucking cyclist had the audacity to be riding in the road, which is clearly designed for automobiles. Pedestrians and cyclists need to stay in their designated zones, it’s not a motorists responsibility to drive safely. /s

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 minutes ago

        In the road isn’t a problem if you stay in the lane where you belong. The cyclist tried passing on the shoulder cause he didn’t want to obey the laws.

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      3 hours ago

      It’s called a right-hook. Cars pass bicycles, then turn right immediately in front of them, causing the cyclist to hit the car. Quite a few cyclists have been killed this way.

      Car brain drivers then blame the cyclist.

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 hours ago

        To be fair, almost no drivers are taught to look in their right hand mirror for cyclists or pedestrians when turning right. Their focus is usually on the oncoming traffic lane. We need to address things like this and train drivers better rather than expect drivers to clue in themselves.

        • Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          29 minutes ago

          Kinda sad something like that requires explicit training. I live in a city with a lot of cyclists. I don’t even have a car, just occasionally borrow my friend’s during the few times I actually need one. And even I check the mirrors for cyclists before turning. No one had to tell me to, it just makes logical sense if you give the slightest damn about the safety of anyone else on the road besides yourself.

        • limelight79@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          3 hours ago

          Yep. And even though I’m also a cyclist, I’ve almost made the same mistake while driving.

          It’s really an issue of the traffic design. For example, we tend to slap bike lanes just to the right of traffic lanes and hope it all works out fine. And it is fine…until intersections where cars might be turning…

    • bobo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 hours ago

      You mean the part of the article where it says the ambulance “turned into him”?

      You’re making assumptions based on vague wording in the article and your preconceived notions of cyclist behavior. You don’t actually know what happened.

  • madthumbs@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    43
    ·
    edit-2
    14 hours ago

    “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.

    • grue@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      14 hours ago

      The ambulance was making an illegal turn across traffic.

      • BogusCabbage@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        16
        ·
        14 hours ago

        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.

        • Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          4 hours ago

          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.

        • thethirdobject@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          10 hours ago

          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

        • grue@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          23
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          13 hours ago

          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!

      • madthumbs@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        14 hours ago

        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.

        • grue@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          22
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          14 hours ago

          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.

          (And don’t try to claim there was only one lane: you conceded that point already when you claimed the cyclist was “illegally passing on the right.” Even an illegal pass doesn’t entitle the vehicle in the left lane to make a right turn across the other vehicle’s path! In order for this collision to be the cyclist’s fault, both vehicles would have had to be in the same lane to begin with, which means there wouldn’t be room for them to be side-by-side and the bike would have hit the back of the ambulance, not be struck by it from the side.)

          • madthumbs@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            14
            ·
            14 hours ago

            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.

            • grue@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              24
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              13 hours ago

              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.

              1. Cyclists are traffic.
              2. The ambulance was making a right turn.
              3. The ambulance hit the cyclist from the side.
              4. Therefore, the ambulance was turning across traffic, because no traffic means no cyclist to hit. QED.