[tomohawk]

A family member was a NY fire fighter many years ago. The Soviets had a lot of people at the UN, and they had diplomatic plates. They would park wherever they wanted, often blocking things. There was nothing the police could do.

The fire chief decided to have fire drills. Whenever a cop saw a car with diplomatic plates parked in front of a hydrant, they would call the fire department, who would come out and perform a drill. Upon seeing the vehicle blocking the hydrant, they would practice breaching through the vehicle to attain access to the hydrant. The vehicle would not survive in a drivable state.

The Soviets complained, but stopped blocking fire accesses.

EDIT: the firechief could solve this by putting truck or police cruiser style bullbars on their vehicles and "carefully nudging" the miscreant vehicles out the the way.

[i_am_jl]

>EDIT: the firechief could solve this by putting truck or police cruiser style bullbars on their vehicles and "carefully nudging" the miscreant vehicles out the the way.

I know this was tongue in cheek, but it underscores a problem I have with this article title.

The problems, despite the article's title, usually don't involve robotaxis vs trucks, but robotaxis vs active firefighting scenes. The article I read earlier this year referenced cars running over hoses and inching towards firefighters after being blocked by an active firefighting scene.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/01/31/san-fr...

[FireBeyond]

One of the challenges with this is that often city/urban fire engines have front bumper discharge lines so that hose can be hooked up to the front of the engine, not just the sides (this is done to improve access options - 1 3/4" hose is fairly flexible, but when you get to 2 1/2" lines or 3"+ supply lines, they need space, and are not overly flexible.)

See: https://firematic.com/trucksnew/levittown19/2.jpg - 1 3/4" attack line on the right with plumbing, and 5" LDH (large diameter hose) supply line on the left.

[kindatrue]

Damn that's rough. I saw a car parked in front a fire hydrant at a fire in Queens once. FDNY simply smashed the windows to open the doors, and then ran a hose through it.

[shagie]

As an aside, the "why not over, under, or around?" question that gets asked.

https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/hoselines-wate...

That has some "how much pressure can be loss to friction and still provide the necessary water rate at the other end." Bends in the hose will increase the amount of friction and thus reduce the flow rate.

[hindsightbias]

I've seen it done twice in TX. They made a point to bend the hose enough to go through the passenger compartment.

[JoeAltmaier]

To make their objection clear, of course. Nobody will do that twice.

[bell-cot]

Heheheheh. Bare-knuckled, but I like that approach.

Beyond instructing emergency responders "if it doesn't stay away, just smash its windows" (mentioned in the article, at n=1 scale)...I wonder if robotaxis have some convenient central depot, which might find its driveways block by emergency street repairs, or some such.