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Why Safer Streets Keep Losing to Fire Trucks (www.youtube.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] [S] 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (7 children)

The takeaway here is not "fuck fire trucks" (nor is it "wtf those crazy !fuckcars people are anti-fire-truck now?!"). The takeaway is that fire trucks often don't have to be as large as they are.

Why should fire departments get a veto over the urban planners when designing the streets, but the urban planners not get a say when the fire department is choosing which trucks to buy?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    I watched the first minute, and it seems the problem is partially that fire departments can dictate standards that make them comfortable instead of what is actually necessary.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    IMO a lot of it is because:

    1. fire department procurement seems unrelated enough that most urbanists aren't paying attention to it,
    2. fire departments choose the biggest trucks they can because of course they do, and
    3. once the trucks are already bought, insisting the roads accommodate them is a fait accompli.
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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Yes, but even given that, the fire department is asking for some pretty outrageous accomodations in their clearances on straights. The first example gave them 3 inches of clearance on either side, but they wanted something close to 2 feet (forget the details).

    I think another problem is that people expect cars to just always park wherever the fuck they want regardless of the law, which is a separate problem.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Its not true everywhere, but at least in the us there is a shortage (and effective monopoly) to where the answer of what engine they get to replace or improve operations is the one with the fastest projected date regardless of costs or size requirements.

    Then its still multiple years out.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Yeah, the video goes into the antitrust aspect of the problem too, and that's also a huge problem -- both with firetrucks in particular, and more generally in the economy at large. (I just didn't want to dilute my comment with multiple "takeaways.")

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