The tenor of the debate about the killed cyclist in Berlin is: The special vehicle of the fire brigade was stuck in traffic and therefore came too late to help. According to a report, traffic data cast doubt on this. A different route would have been much faster. But there was a lack of information.
In the case of the fatal cement mixer accident in Berlin at the end of October, the special vehicle of the Berlin fire brigade would have reached the scene of the accident much faster via an alternative route than via the route ultimately chosen. That is the result of an evaluation of traffic data from the navigation device manufacturer “TomTom”, which the “Tagesspiegel” claims is available. That morning, however, the rescue vehicle took the A100 city highway, which was partially blocked by climate activists. Because the special car supposedly reached the scene of the accident too late, after the death of the cyclist who had an accident, an intensive debate broke out nationwide about the joint responsibility of the climate activists.
The data is intended to show that the route from the Charlottenburg-Nord fire station via the A100 to the scene of the accident this Monday morning took an average of up to 45 minutes for normal cars, also due to the blockade by climate activists. An alternative route through the city via Otto-Suhr-Allee is said to have lasted on average just under 20 minutes for normal traffic that day. A difference of around 25 minutes. Emergency vehicles would have made both routes much faster.
In a final report of the operation, the fire brigade explained that the rescue vehicle was eight minutes late due to the traffic jam on the A100. The car ultimately took 19 minutes and only arrived when the seriously injured cyclist had already been rescued.
However, the traffic data also gave rise to doubts as to whether the rescue vehicle would have really progressed eight minutes faster on other days, writes the “Tagesspiegel”. On average, cars took more than 17 minutes to travel over the A100 to the scene of the accident. Without much traffic, the route should actually be manageable in around ten or eleven minutes. However, this is said to have only been the case on one Monday in the past two months – on October 3rd, a holiday. On all other Mondays between the beginning of September and mid-November, morning rush hour traffic is said to have progressed much more slowly on the section of the route.
Based on the available traffic data, doubts arise about the depiction of the fire brigade. In addition, the knowledge could be criminally relevant because of the investigations against the climate demonstrators, the newspaper suspects. The fire brigade has not yet publicly commented on its own account. Since the report is the subject of investigations by the public prosecutor’s office, a fire department spokesman writes: “I therefore ask for your understanding that the Berlin fire department cannot provide any information”.
The question remains why the firefighters did not take the probably faster alternative route through the city that day. This is probably mainly due to the fact that there is still no reasonable navigation software for emergency trips – the firefighters therefore mainly drive by feel and local knowledge. When asked why useful navigation technology does not yet exist, the Berlin fire brigade replies: “A loss of time due to a traffic jam for a normal vehicle does not occur in the same way for a vehicle with special signals. As a result, normal navigation software can sometimes even lead to delays on arrival .” There are research projects for such “blue light routing” nationwide, but none at the Berlin fire brigade.
