this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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I dont get it.
Here the shoulder is traversable. Like its wide enough to drive down.
We dont do this because emergency services just drive down the shoulder.
The shoulders in Germany and to my understanding most of Europe are used to give broken down vehicles space to change a tire or wait for service in safety, or to allow construction site to move the lanes to the sides without merging. Traffic jams are often a result of to much traffic, construction or accidents and often enough cause cars to break down. Hence the shoulders are often blocked in situations, where the emergency vehicles are needed. Also, there are many, of not most, streets without shoulders. The Autobahn/ National routes being the exception.
Also the shoulders in Germany, the US and UK are in my experience rather bumpy. So driving in them at full speed can be a bit risky.
I thing the argument for this method is that it is universal: traffic is not moving? Move over and make space and allow emergency vehicles to pass through at full speed.
What would you prefer? An uninterrupted lane or one where you have to get past broken down cars/merging traffic, ...
In a situation where every second can count, it's easy to see why Germany (among other countries) does this.
loads of commenters in this thread are saying that when cars part it doesn't form "an uninterrupted lane" because inevitably there are obstacles, like people who don't do it, or don't leave enough room, or what have you.
shoulders aren't really littered with broken down cars.
Shoulders are still for emergency stops even when the traffic is standing & ppl might leave their vehicles.
The middle of the road is more traveled & is on average cleaner of debris that could eg damage a tyre. Also less chances of ppl walking there.
It's just that someone improved on a working shoulder system with what is statistically a bit better one (that works even in cases where there is no shoulder). And it didn't cost much (basically just marketing to get ppl to understand it).
You know, why not be better if we can be better?
Because, those thread is full of people saying that in practice it never looks like this.
I always see this tho, and I'm not even from Germany.
It might not be that perfectly straight, but I can clearly see it as a better practice that the 10+ years ago (afaik the data shows that too).
This isn't just for standing traffic, it's for rush hours too.
(If someone wants to maliciously stop emergency vehicles they can do that on shoulders too.)
We have an uninterrupted emergency lane.
We give our emergency traffic both the left and the right shoulder to get where they need to go. You give them one lane in the middle; we give them two lanes on the sides.
The left shoulder is an uninterrupted lane. The right shoulder is our breakdown lane. We very rarely enter or exit a divided highway on the left.
We dont have shoulders here, on account of all the road construction.
The shoulders here are for "emergency stops" not "emergency vehicles", an abundance could crash, drive over someone going for a piss, or get stuck behind a broken vehicle.
Also there is more change for debris in (less used) emergency lane than in the middle of the two inner lanes (less chance for a crash or flat tyre).