I've driven a lot of Medic Units and my question to you is "How fast is too fast?"I drove an emergency vehicle of one type of another for many years. I know how adrenaline can affect your judgement. Even after driving fire trucks, police cars and ambulances when you have a child in the back you tend to get that adrenaline going and think to yourself "We gotta save this kid."
How much time do you save going 60MPH vs 45MPH. Let me tell you if you are less than 10 miles from the hospital you won't be saving that much time. Probably less than a minute or two.
Just yesterday I was on a 4 lane highway and I saw an ambulance approching from a side road and determined that we would meet at about the same time so I slowed down to almost a stop to make sure he knew I would be letting him go. However a big SUV in the fast lane passed me like I was backing up. He obviously didn't see the ambulance until it was in the intersection. Fortunatly the SUV managed to get stopped in time but I was holding my breath.
Also I did have that 17 year old who attempted suicide which we found on an ice cold garage floor. Going on "your not dead until you are warm and dead" I expect I was going a little too fast I know I was going 75MPH - 80MPH. However we were 20 miles from the hospital. I had one panic stop when someone pulled out in front of me. Other than that we made it record time but the 17 year old did not. Those extra minutes that I saved didn't make a difference.
What's your opinion?
