Ambulance crashes putting lives at risk

MOTORISTS are asked to be vigilant in looking out for flashing blue lights coming up behind them after a spate of accidents involving accident crews.

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) were involved in 90 road traffic collisions that were not their fault between April and November last year.

Drivers are urged to be on the look out for flashing blue lights and listen for sirens, particularly at junctions, and not to panic when they see them.

Steve Farnsworth, General Manager of Fleet at EMAS, said: “Our vehicles drive millions of miles each year, much of the time faster than normal, so having some incidents when driving is inevitable.

“However, we are asking motorists sharing the roads with our ambulance crews to be vigilant when checking for flashing blue lights at junctions and in their mirrors.

“Each time one of our ambulances is damaged or involved in a collision, it cannot be used to respond to patients experiencing an emergency.

“By double checking for blue lights, you can help to reduce the number of collisions.”

Advice for motorists who spot the flashing lights approaching is to:

calm and give yourself time to plan your next move, and not to brake suddenly.

for somewhere to pull over and stop if it is safe

at normal speed if there is nowhere to stop, as the ambulance driver will look for a safe place to overtake you.

aware that there may be more than one emergency vehicle coming through so listen out for sirens and check around you for more blue flashing lights before moving off.

not try to out-run the emergency vehicle.

Mr Farnsworth added: “The main message we want to get across is that we don’t want people to panic, our ambulance crews are trained to deal with the pressure of being on the roads and sothey will always find a safe place to overtake if you can’t get out of the way.

“We don’t want to have to spend money fixing ambulances, we want to be able to put that money into saving patients’ lives.

“We hope this campaign will help raise awareness.”

A spokesman for the service said many collisions are classified as ‘shared responsibility.

However the 90 crash figure was the focus of the campaign as they were all collisions which could have been avoided.