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Comment by abrookewood | Hacker News Reader

In regard to point 1, I think people were TOO courteous. Seriously, everyone is evacuating and heading in the same direction, so drive on BOTH sides of the road. In some of the videos I've seen, I'm really surprised that people didn't get trapped and die because the orderly evacuation that only uses half the possible road bandwidth.

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As there were only two fatalities in the entire evacuation of nearly 80,000 people I think your assertion that people were "TOO courteous" is incorrect.

They were as curteous as needed to ensure a timely evacuation with a minimum of loss of life.

If someone had started being 'less courteous' chaos would have broken out and many more would have died.

As much as I hate the cliched phrase it would appear that 'keep calm and carry on' was the prudent thing to do in this situation.

You're probably right. I'm guessing my fear at being confronted by that situation would have led me to behave inappropriately. It's like being stuck in the slow lane, but the consequences aren't being late to work, they consequences are your entire family dying in the car beside you. I can't imagine how horrible that must have been for everyone involved.

Fort McMurray evacuee here.

I was in the Thickwood neighbourhood, and we were in complete gridlock. This only changed once the RCMP did exactly what you suggest -- they used both sides of the highway.

Both sides on the north side of the city were used for traffic heading north. Same on the south side.

Once they did that, traffic started moving again.

Glad you got out .. those videos were truly terrifying.

Emergency vehicles need to go the other way.

And people driving to pick up e.g. grandma, who can't drive, at her house.

Fair point.

Emergency vehicles often need the other lane to go either direction. Maximizing capacity is a more nuanced thing than one use/direction.

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