• Question: If an ambulance is on its way to save someone, and it runs someone over, does it stop to help them?

    Asked by yourfaceisabook to Hermine, Katy, Laura, Nathalie, Paula on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Nathalie Pettorelli

      Nathalie Pettorelli answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi there,

      Yes, the ambulance would call into dispatch stating they are unable to complete the original call, and dispatch would then send another unit to the original call 😉

    • Photo: Paula Salgado

      Paula Salgado answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Well, even when an ambulance is on an emergency call, it should still watch out for people and be careful. Unfortunately, sometimes accidents happen – and of course when that happens, they must stop and help! 😉 They’ll just get another ambulance to help the first emergency!

    • Photo: Katy Mee

      Katy Mee answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hmmm, good question. I think legally the ambulance has to stop, otherwise it would be hit and run (and you would hope that any members of the ambulance service would have the natural instinct to want to stop anyway, even if they were on their way to a more serious incident).

      There are always two people in an ambulance so at the very least one would get out and stay with the new casualty until their ambulance arrived whilst the other went off to the original casualty. I guess they would have to use their professional judgment to decide which person needed the most urgent care (difficult to say when they haven’t seen the original casualty yet!). Either way they’d have to call another ambulance to tend to the person they decided not to help!!

    • Photo: Hermine Schnetler

      Hermine Schnetler answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Yes, it is the law after all. They would no doubt stop do an immediate assessment and decide if another ambulance is required, or if that person they hit is stable enough to go in there ambulance whilst they go to the other emergency call.

    • Photo: Laura Dixon

      Laura Dixon answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      As someone who almost got run over by an ambulance while cycling today, I’m going to say no 😉
      It may depend on how severely injured the person in the ambulance is. I’m sure at the least, they’d call for another ambulance 🙂

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