2009 Ambulance Crash Log

[crotchitymedic1986]

The totals for the year are as follows:

There were 207 serious ambulance accidents reported to EMS Network

Those 207 accidents have produced the following:

EMS Personnel Injured: 191

EMS Personnel Killed: 5

Patient Injured: 39

Patient Killed: 9

Passenger in Amb injured 3

Passenger in Amb killed: 2

Other Vehicle Injured: 119

Other Vehicle Killed: 20

Pedestrian Injured: 3

Pedestrian Killed: 4

[jonas salk]

The totals for the year are as follows:

There were 207 serious ambulance accidents reported to EMS Network

Those 207 accidents have produced the following:

EMS Personnel Injured: 191

EMS Personnel Killed: 5

Patient Injured: 39

Patient Killed: 9

Passenger in Amb injured 3

Passenger in Amb killed: 2

Other Vehicle Injured: 119

Other Vehicle Killed: 20

Pedestrian Injured: 3

Pedestrian Killed: 4

Is there a breakdown of how many of these accidents took place while running L&S? And further to that, for collisions that occurred while transporting, is there any data pertaining to the use of L&S and how severe the patient was?

[CBEMT]

Richard, is there a link for that? I'd love to disseminate that through my agencies.

[crotchitymedic1986]

No there is not a breakdown. I read every accident posted on the emsnetwork's website (http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman2/publish/ambulance-crashes.shtml) and compiled the numbers myself. I can tell you that the death numbers are probably much higher, as many of the injured people were reported critical at the scene (often flown), but there was no follow-up if they died or recovered later, unless you were interested in searching for all of those stories, and knew everyone's name (occassionally you would see a follow up story if multiple people died from the same accident over a 2-3 day period, but you know that many probably died in ICU two weeks later, and the obituary is all that made it to the newspaper). The overall numbers are also low, because this data only represents the crashes that made the news (as you are aware, many do not). I did not categorize by L&S or by who was at fault; my recollection was that it was about 50/50 for L&S versus not, and about 75/25 the other driver's fault versus the medics (other driver did not yield or was drunk more often). When it was the medic's fault it was usually during a critical transport or enroute to a critical call, that the accidents occured, so you can surmize that they were probably driving emotionally and not defensively.

The numbers are actually lower than I thought they would be, but as I said throughout the year; most of these deaths were preventable, and just "1" death is too many.

Also, I did this month by month, not all at once, and it may have taken me a maximum of 20-30 minutes per month, so now that we are starting a new year, you might want to start keeping a runnin total for your department.

Edited January 6, 2010 by crotchitymedic1986