There are newer traffic laws being put into place in america,. They say you have to move over or slow down to 2omoph below the speed limit for mergency vehicles on the side of the road. This is not a terrible idea, but like most not terrible ideas the ACAB people have found a new way to make bullshit tickets out of this. Yes, I got a ticket on this in a trap. In short the police set up a trap on the inside of a highway turn with solid cement barricades and use bike cops on the left hand of the highway. They use bike cops because the lights are not visible over the barricades. So when you are coming around the turn you cannot see the emergency vehicles because the cement barricades make them invisible. Then when you have less than 5 seconds from seeing them to being past them you are supposed to dive into the right hand lanes as fast as you can or slow down to 20 MPH below the speed limit. They do this is crowded traffic so that if you obey the law you are going to cause an accident. This is clearly done on purpose during heavy traffic times when speeding is hard because the traffic is so dense you cannot really go too fast. I actually agree with the law that if you have a chance you should give emergency vehicles room, but you cannot enforce this shit in a way that means you have to slam into people changing lanes or lose 20MPH in seconds in dense fast moving traffic. So beware, states are now doing this as an extra driving tax because they are broke as fuck due to not collecting taxes on Mar-A-Lago criminals.
California has had this for a while and it usually works out fine. It applies both to emergency vehicles pulled over on the shoulder of freeways, but also any vehicle pulled over on the shoulder
Sorry but am I to understand this is a new thing to Americans, slowing down and letting emergency vehicles through? Jesus Christ, this is like one of the first things you're taught in driving school in Canada
pretty sure you need to know this on the learner's permit test before driving school. you'd have to be a special kind of self centred and stupid not to be inclined to do so in the first place.
Not that, but pulling over to the left lane or slowing down a lot if you're driving on a police car who has someone pulled over or emergency vehicles responding to an accident.
That's what I thought @Tererune meant at first, and yeah that's been the law for as long as I've been driving. But she's actually referring to when emergency vehicles are pulled over on the side of the freeway, you're supposed to move over to the next lane if you can or slow down.
Also, the requirement for non-emergency vehicles to pull over to make way for emergency vehicles is not consistently followed, unfortunately. It kind of depends on where you live. I've seen the law followed more on the west coast and in rural areas. But east coast drivers in urban areas seem to have no problem driving right along side a fire truck that has it's siren blasting.
It has become a ticketing law in places. It was a thing you should have done before, but not a written violation until just recently. It was probably covered by reckless driving or some other vague all inclusive violation before, but the move over law was passed in the duh in 2023. So this is a new law despite moving over for stopped vehicles being something you should do.
If the emergency vehicle cannot be seen on the inside of a curve until the last moment and you have to hit the person next to you to pull over, you don't unless you see a person in your lane. Even then it might not be the proper thing to do. It is not always the case you can see an emergency vehicle in time to safely change lanes at speed. If you do not understand that, then you are the douchebag. I will agree that if you see the emergency vehicle in the distance and do not make an effort to safely merge without hitting someone, then you are a problem. Your statement does not fit all driving conditions, and emergencies are not always conveniently on long desolate stretches of empty highway with erasy visibility. I would even guess that a large percentage of emergencies occur in more difficult driving conditions where visibility and other factors may not be ideal.
