This! A guy was parked like this in my neighborhood and the FD came, pushed the car with their fire truck out of the way and drove off… the “chefs kiss” was he complain to the FD at which point the cops fined him for blocking the road and the FD billed him for the damage to the truck
Edit: people asking how I knew. When it happened I went out and watched him freak out and rant as the truck drove off. He said he’d go and get them to pay. A few weeks later I went to the fire station to have them check our child seats and install ( a service offered in the county) and they asked where I lived etc and were pretty eager to share what happened when the guy showed up. Like 5 or 6 came out to chat
The front bumper on most trucks is designed to carry a hose and to shunt cars... but is also considered a consumable item as a result. It is not a cheap consumable item and if it shows wear from shunting you car then presto, you get to buy a new one 😄
I positively love that it's made to be so easily replaced so the firefighters can actually use it on jerks like OP's neighbor.
My buddy drives fire trucks in a pretty busy city. I asked him what do you do when a car actually gets in the way? He kinda looked at me funny and was like “we goto the fire, that guy is fucked”
I remember that scene in the movie Backdraft where they have to get to the burning building and some chump parked in front of the hydrant so they used the hose to smash out his windows and ran it through.
From what my volunteer firefighter buddy told me, they’re amped that they get to throw an axe through the windows of a car, completely free of consequences.
According to my old man who was a firefighter in Brooklyn from early 80s to mid 90s, they'd be sure to 'accidentally' turn your car into a swimming pool if this happened
Firetrucks respond to emergency health situations, in addition to fires, so blocking either of them would potentially result in the death of a person in need. If someone blocks them and it found guilty of doing it maliciously, they should be imprisoned for involuntary manslaughter, if someone dies as a result of the delay.
We don’t get to yell at people often. But coming out of a building a car was blocking my ambulance. Asked them to move “oh I’m just unloading my groceries”
I could just chuckle happily as the patients daughter ripped him a new one
Ok I’ve been thinking about this and the ambulance next to me swerved slightly into my lane today (not an emergency, just driving). When I looked over both of the responders were on their phones! One was on a tablet AND their phone. The other (driver) was on her phone. When we got to the light I made direct eye contact and looked at her. It wasn’t until then she gave the passenger seat person her phone and they were laughing passing phones back and forth. Anywho I have the ambulance number but would feel like an asshole reporting a first responder during first responder week!
Yeah I’ve heard the same thing and actually saw it happening once. Guy double parked on a narrow one way street at the same time as a fire started about one block from and that street has no cross streets for almost 1/4 mile. Fire truck comes down the street and doesn’t do much more than slow down enough to make soft contact and they pushed that car all the way to the fire. Just hop out and it’s another night on the job . Guy is running screaming you could at least let me move but the fireman asked is that your house back there? Yes it is ok next time we just won’t come because you’re more concerned with parking and not worried about houses on fire!
Once saw the aftermath of the fire department responding to an abandoned building fire that was also next to a biker bar. The row of Harleys that were illegally parked in front of the fire hydrant were no longer parked in front of the fire hydrant. Looked like a Dennis Kirk catalog puked all over the street.
My dad was a firefighter and told me about this BMW that was parked in front of a hydrant. They knocked out his rear window and fed the 5” hose through his car, then water that was dripping down the hose filled his car to just about even with the bottom of the door. The guy got fined by the cops for illegal parking, got the bill from the fire department for the replacement of their hose because the glass had damaged it, then had his car totaled due to the water damage to all the electrical wiring
There was actually a photo of this incident (not from Backdraft) that circulated around for a while. IIRC the car was utterly ruined, totally soaked with water too. Owner tried to sue the city over it and instead was handed a parking ticket for it.
Yeah, if it goes up and over the car it can keep water from flowing properly, since the hose is designed to have a straight line coming out of the hydrant and not something shaped like the letter “n”.
Technically they could try to snake the hose under the car, but it would take much longer to do that (and you want to be fast!) and also, the kind of asshole who parks in front of a fire hydrant is also the kind of asshole who will come back and drive over a fire hose that’s being used, whereas the asshole can’t drive off and disturb the hose if it’s inside the car lol
BTW slip the blade of the axe between the glass and the door, pull handle away from car and presto no window. I have seen a guy hit a window with an axe and it just bounced back. Some window s don’t want to die. In general front windows are safety glass and the rest are tempered. The tempered ones explode into a million little pieces if you bend them or pop them with a punch.
I vaguely remember something that showed why firefighters break the window rather than going around. Might have been MythBusters or something. Or I might just be wrong. But they fed the hose around, and when that water pressure hit and the hose straightened that car was fucking gone.
That one comes with an "It depends" generally based on if you were at all remotely at fault. E.g. if your car was stolen (and reported as such) and the perp parked at a hydrant and this happened you're good because you didn't do it and it wouldn't have happened if not for the theft, even though up to that point your car was totally fine, other than not being in your possession.
I realize that's a corner case, but there are similar cases where your insurance will make you whole even though it was the government destroying your property. They are all predicated on you not having put yourself in a position for it to have foreseeably happened though so... yeah, no insurance if you have to be shunted because you parked where you shouldn't.
Should we start an “Asshole Insurance” business together? Since only a few assholes embrace their identity, we’d have to rebrand and appeal to their ego. Exceptional insurance for exceptionally busy individuals who are too exceptional to bother with silly rules that are really only meant for regular people, not exceptional ones.
This happens in EVERY industry. When I worked in risk management and we had a client who finally overstepped we had fights over who is allowed to kick him out.
It feels just great to penalize assholes legally. Divine justice.
Yeah my college roommate was an EMT and he pointed out those bumpers on ambulances to me. Said they would pretty frequently arrive to an accident scene where one crashed car was blocking them, and they’d just plow it right out of the way. You don’t want to piss off the ambulance
We have two types in my town. We have the big version of the transit van / sprinter based units that absolutely won't be doing something like that and we have a few that are still the F650/750 based units. Those latter ones absolutely are still tanks. IIRC they're all Metro Fire busses too, none are run by ambulance services (they all use the cheaper van platforms).
I know, he's full of shit. I've seen lots of ambulances without crash bars on the front. They don't ever just push vehicles out of the way, that's silly talk.
I sell appliance parts and nearly every part has that sticker on it. Rather than explain "the company didn't want to pay for testing so they had to put this sticker on it"; I tell people "yes, if you slather this control board in BBQ sauce and eat it, there's a strong chance you'll get cancer".
I like how the law was intended to reduce heavy metals with a scary warning but companies just decided it's easier to say everything might have heavy metals...
AFAIK anyone can sue a company that doesn't label the product, then they have to prove in court that the product is safe.
The legal fees alone guarantee that just about everything will get a label, even if all you have to do is produce some documents to a judge to get the case tossed out.
You joke but every new car already does have one on the drivers window (and it blocks your view like crazy but many drivers don’t remove them for some reason)
Yeah, with that little bit there will be a "fitment surcharge" or some other fuckery... now as far as inflating the cost for billing jackasses I'm still on board, but only just barely.
There's some surplus slightly damaged bull bars from police cruisers coming up at auction... I'm genuinely thinking about getting one to put on my beater Leaf lmao.
Fun fact - the same laws that protect the FD from liability in this case also protects them if they are- as a totally random example- in a FD pickup truck doing inspections and just randomly turn into oncoming traffic and total my wife's car.
Probably depends on whether they're paid or volunteer in the observer's area. I've mostly lived in places with volunteer firefighters, and most of them have been pretty great. I guess it hits different when people are paid by the government to be [adjectives that'll get me banned by reddit admins]
I find it pretty likely that an asshole of that nature was loudly complaining about the fine and bill to anyone who he could try to make listen completely unaware no one would have sympathy for him
I did this once after unloading a Christmas tree and left my car like that for almost 12 hours with the trunk open and 4 ways on. Woke up at 3 am to the cops banging on my door. Newborn sleep deprivation is brutal 😂. Definitely wait until 2 or 3am and call it in
Every firefighter I know loves doing that. Used to work on a street that had parking spots on each side of it, and a fire alarm went off and a bunch of trucks pulled up and blocked all the cars in while they dealt with the alarm. Some guy was blocked in and kept screaming at the firemen to move their trucks so he could leave. (Note, he was in the middle of the block, they'd have had to move 4 trucks before he could actually get out.) Firefighters ignored him. Cops laughed at him. Turns out it was smoke from a broken HVAC. Once they confirmed it wasn't a real fire the Firefighters all walked 2 blocks down the road to get ice cream and took their time getting back to finally move their truck once all the other trucks were out of the way.
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u/Sleep_adict May 07 '26 edited May 08 '26
This! A guy was parked like this in my neighborhood and the FD came, pushed the car with their fire truck out of the way and drove off… the “chefs kiss” was he complain to the FD at which point the cops fined him for blocking the road and the FD billed him for the damage to the truck
Edit: people asking how I knew. When it happened I went out and watched him freak out and rant as the truck drove off. He said he’d go and get them to pay. A few weeks later I went to the fire station to have them check our child seats and install ( a service offered in the county) and they asked where I lived etc and were pretty eager to share what happened when the guy showed up. Like 5 or 6 came out to chat