I’m from Chile and whenever you’re in a jam and an ambulance needs to get through, cars move out of their way to let it through. In Santiago, at least. We also stop at zebra crossings to let pedestrians cross.

It's not just corporations. It's the individual over the collective. And that is just the nature of certain societies, specifically more competitive societies. In India for example, the mindset of everyone in traffic is 'me over others' - fuck everyone else, i grab what space I can get. If I don't, the next fucker will. Like if it starts raining, your 1 hour trip is now 3 hours, not 1.5 hours because there will be a jam at every intersection in the city. There are just so many people on the road and infrastructure (and society / government at large) that hasn't lent itself to cooperation but rather competition. It becomes their mindset, it becomes everyone's mindset. That is why many from that region turn right politically. I bet it's the same for many Latin countries.

As if the usa is the only country in the world with congested rush hour traffic. I've been in streets that were way more tightly packed + chaotic than this and people would still clear a path for vehicles with sirens. The emergency vehicle would only be able to go 20 to 30 kmh without a motorcycle escort, but that's still significantly faster than what we're seeing here.

What we're seeing in this video, is that (some) vehicles that are directly in front of the ambulance move out of the way, but vehicles that are a tiny bit further ahead, don't even try. If a vehicle that is directly in front of the ambulance can move out of the way, then a vehicle that is 30 places ahead, is also able to move out of the way, but they don't even try ... What should happen is that as soon as drivers hear a siren, they should start looking for where it's coming from and then clear a path, and drivers should also especially not be driving into the path that others are clearing. Instead it seems like these drivers wait till the siren is right behind them and only then some start to move out of the way.

Looking for excuses in American exceptionalism reads like a case of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". This particular problem is something that can be easily improved upon by a public awareness campaign and some light fines for those that keep obstructing after the campaign has been running for some time. But what's obviously even easier than that, is finding an excuse to continue doing nothing about the problem.

There's congestion in German cities too. The point isn't to drive away. During rettungsgasse, nobody goes anywhere. They just make way by stopping to the sides.

The problem in NY is that the cars are too big for the lanes to do that.

There seems to be quite some space there compared to what I've seen emergency vehicles use here in the Netherlands. Recently there was one traveling across a pretty narrow bridge and a road that normally allocated 2 cars. The traffic was completely stuck and yet somehow the emergency vehicle got enough space to travel through. It outpaces me while I was racing down the bridge on a bike. That was more crowded and narrow than this. People went everywhere with their car to create a way for the emergency vehicle