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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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    • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    Not just bikes did a video in this, showing how stupidly big and dangerous American fire trucks are.

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    [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Another way to look at it:

    It's a political competition between protecting property and protecting people likely to be renting.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

    That is a really fucking weird spin on it, in multiple ways.

    First of all, you think renters don't use sidewalks or bike lanes?

    Second, you think wide, highway-like streets are good for property owners?

    Third, you don't think single-family houses can be rented or that housing units in high-rises (requiring large ladder trucks to access) can be owned?

    I, for one, see no particular reason why owners' and renters' interests wouldn't be aligned on this issue.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    I believe government serves the needs of property before it serves the lives of its citizens, and not without reason.

    You're balancing an anxiety of, "I don't want my property to burn down" with "I don't want to get creamed by a car". The people with the money and the power and much more anxious about the first, so that's why the world has the zoning that it does.

    I'm obviously not saying that's a GOOD thing, but codes are political documents.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

    Ah, that way of explaining it makes a lot more sense. You're talking about "protecting property" from a macro perspective, rather than an individual owner's perspective.

    I'm not necessarily sure I agree that people in power are thinking about it that intentionally (as opposed to it being an emergent consequence of how the city is organized, as I explained in another comment), but I can see how it's plausible.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    What is the macro but the aggregation of micro?

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

    Emergent properties, network effect, a bunch of other phenomena I can't remember the names of right now...

    Macro is very often different from the mere aggregation of micro. That's why macroeconomics isn't the same as microeconomics and it's stupid to try to run a country like a business, for example.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Well, when it comes to politics, I think things are just aggregations of individual people and their power. It's more convenient to THINK in terms of macro, the same way that it's easier to drag a file to the trashbin on the desktop than it is to find the index table on the drive and zero out the entry....

    Like I think about how hard it is to increase housing. "The macro" level, though, is really just a lot of individual property owners pursuing their narrow financial interest in keeping property values high by keeping demmand high.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Well, when it comes to politics, I think things are just aggregations of individual people and their power.

    Consider the difference between some number of individuals having similar ideology but acting alone, vs. a political party/union/activist organization.

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