Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from dot Com. Eathan,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and today
Speaker 1: joining me in the studio once again my colleague, my buddy,
Speaker 1: my fellow improviser, Ben Boland. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Jonathan, thank you again for having me on, and listeners,
Speaker 1: thank you also for allowing me onto one of your
Speaker 1: favorite shows today. I'm here under the auspice of car Stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was because a request, a specific request
Speaker 1: from one of my listeners. I shall just read out
Speaker 1: the email. Hi, Jonathan, I was catching up on some
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff episodes and had a crazy topic that I've
Speaker 1: not heard anyone outside the industry really talk about. Have
Speaker 1: you ever considered teaming up with Ben or Scott to
Speaker 1: talk about the tech of ambulances? Firefighting equipment is talked
Speaker 1: about adding zeum in public forums, and fancy new medical
Speaker 1: equipment sometimes gets the spotlight. But what about the ambulance.
Speaker 1: I'll admit that until recently they hadn't changed significantly since
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies when they were modified from being inspired
Speaker 1: from hers is the only vehicle designed for a passenger
Speaker 1: lying down at the time. However, now, ambulances range from
Speaker 1: the massive bariatric trucks to the new Mercedes Sprinter that
Speaker 1: have mixed reviews to work in to the Volvo car
Speaker 1: based ambulances Europe is experimenting with. It has taken nearly
Speaker 1: half a century, but the humble ambulance is beginning to
Speaker 1: see some innovations, including the introduction of safety features. Watch
Speaker 1: ambulance crash tests on YouTube, Efficiency and tech to save lives.
Speaker 1: I'm certainly biased, being a volunteer medic and having many
Speaker 1: paramedic friends, but maybe you, Scott or Ben and the
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff audience could find it an interesting topic to
Speaker 1: dive into. Take Care Lee, Yeah, no, you know I
Speaker 1: recognize Lee's name, and I think this is such a
Speaker 1: fantastic se gestion. Uh. Scott and I have been doing
Speaker 1: car stuff for quite a while, um, not quite as
Speaker 1: long as Tech Stuff, which is one of the original
Speaker 1: three podcast we ever started making. But we have this
Speaker 1: moment which I'm sure you've encountered to, Jonathan, where you're
Speaker 1: looking back over a list of all the stuff you've
Speaker 1: done and you go, wait, we haven't done this when
Speaker 1: really heck I went to how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: typed an ambulance. Can't believe we don't have how ambulances work, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, now we are verging on the very first
Speaker 1: official explanation of how ambulances work every ever, not not
Speaker 1: just for how stuff works. I'm saying like no one
Speaker 1: has taken the time to actually explain this until this moment, right,
Speaker 1: which might be hyperbolie, scoot to the edge of your seats,
Speaker 1: um or you know, if you're driving, I guess, uh,
Speaker 1: stay focused on the road, right because number one, that's
Speaker 1: rule number one. Of course. Now we looked into, um,
Speaker 1: we looked into some surprise twist and turns about the
Speaker 1: story of the ambulance. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't really think about is that
Speaker 1: the ambulance itself predates the automobile. Yeah. In fact, ambulance
Speaker 1: can apply to lots of different types of vehicles. And
Speaker 1: to really understand the importance and the place of the ambulance,
Speaker 1: you kind of got to look back into history. And
Speaker 1: the word itself, ambulance comes from the Latin word ambulaire
Speaker 1: or ambulare if you prefer don't, I don't speak with Latin, so,
Speaker 1: but that means to move about and the earliest ambulances
Speaker 1: weren't really about necessarily getting sick or injured people to
Speaker 1: medical treatment. Uh. They were more about moving them away
Speaker 1: from the healthy people by force, so kind of like
Speaker 1: a prison bus for sick people. Now that there were
Speaker 1: different kinds, right, you had you had the military type,
Speaker 1: which was all about retrieving injured soldiers and moving them
Speaker 1: out of the field of battle. But then you also
Speaker 1: had the type that were in more populated like urban areas,
Speaker 1: some of the growing cities, and that was more about
Speaker 1: this person over here doesn't seem to be acting properly.
Speaker 1: Let's get this person away from everybody else before it spreads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's put you on the plague cart. Yeah. And it
Speaker 1: could have been the plague, It could have been mental illness,
Speaker 1: medicine wasn't quite where it was, could have been your neighbors,
Speaker 1: or just a bunch of jerks. It will claim that
Speaker 1: you are sick. Yeah, yeah, I got that. That werewolf
Speaker 1: is UM. But if you look at the the development
Speaker 1: of emergency response, you'll see that it is in fact
Speaker 1: closely tied to warfare. Again, not a big surprise. UM.
Speaker 1: During the Roman era, you would have teams of soldiers
Speaker 1: that would carry away the injured on litters. That would
Speaker 1: be like a device that would be not quite a cart.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hooked up, usually to an animal of
Speaker 1: some sort, and it carries you at an incline. The
Speaker 1: other end of it drags on the ground. Often it's
Speaker 1: not the most comfortable way to move around, or they
Speaker 1: might use stretchers. They would actually receive compensation for each
Speaker 1: wounded soldier returned safely, which is interesting when you think
Speaker 1: about working on commission. It's it's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most efficient, although soulless, ways to ensure that they maximize
Speaker 1: their efficiency, right, Yeah, yeah, it was really and this
Speaker 1: was something that was common throughout the ancient to medieval
Speaker 1: era of warfare, was that there would be a reward
Speaker 1: given for the return of wounded soldiers because often in
Speaker 1: this era you had at the end of the battle
Speaker 1: one side, whichever side was you know, less worse off,
Speaker 1: because I don't know that you can call anyone a
Speaker 1: winner really, but whichever side quote unquote one the battle
Speaker 1: would end up taking prisoners and then ransoming them off,
Speaker 1: so being able to be removed from the field of
Speaker 1: battle when you're no longer able to fight without being
Speaker 1: captured by the enemy was a big deal. So the
Speaker 1: Knights of St John a k a. The Knights of
Speaker 1: Malta or the Knights Hospitalitier were charged with the purpose
Speaker 1: to care for the poor, the injured and the sick
Speaker 1: back in the eleventh century. They were formed about the
Speaker 1: same time as the Knights Templar, because this is all
Speaker 1: during the time of the Crusades. Now, the reason I
Speaker 1: bring up the Knights of St John is because they
Speaker 1: were very much involved in the retrieval of wounded soldiers
Speaker 1: during Battle uh And when the Knights Templar were officially
Speaker 1: dissolved in twelve, much of the wealth that they owned,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of it, went to the
Speaker 1: Knights of St. John and the order itself divided into
Speaker 1: two branches. One of them became a military order similar
Speaker 1: to the Knights Templar, and the other one continued to
Speaker 1: care for the sick and injured. Now one of those
Speaker 1: two branches no longer exists, right I guess which one
Speaker 1: the military order. That's that's an excellent guest, and you
Speaker 1: are correct, sir, Thank you. I am a bit of
Speaker 1: an armchair guess. Or one thing that is interesting about
Speaker 1: this before we move on however, with the Knights of St.
Speaker 1: John is that I believe, and it may being correct here,
Speaker 1: but I believe this was one of the first organizations,
Speaker 1: at least in the West, that would care for people
Speaker 1: regardless of which side. That's that's correct. They would They
Speaker 1: would retrieve soldiers wounded from any side of a battle
Speaker 1: and treat them. Uh, they're the Maltese Cross. Also eventually
Speaker 1: evolved into the Red Cross. Uh. Also just random trivia here.
Speaker 1: One of my distant relatives used to rule Malta. So
Speaker 1: what yeah, wait, when are you serious? I am absolutely serious? Okay?
Speaker 1: Is this um? Could you give me some time and
Speaker 1: space contacts? Were we talking like nineteen seventies, early twentieth century, nine,
Speaker 1: early I think thirty seven maybe? Uh? Yeah, his his um.
Speaker 1: His governing of Malta was not without political issues, political
Speaker 1: and religious issues. That's all I can really say about
Speaker 1: that without turning this podcast into something completely Okay, But
Speaker 1: for the record, I think people probably want to hear
Speaker 1: that story. I know I do, so we can talk
Speaker 1: about it off the air. Since it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: the controversy was ambulance related, It wasn't. It wasn't. So
Speaker 1: the Spanish now moving on from from the eleventh to
Speaker 1: fourteenth centuries, they began to use wagons to transport people
Speaker 1: in need of emergency medical care back in fourteen eight seven,
Speaker 1: that's during the whole like we're getting into Ferdinand and
Speaker 1: Isabella time. They also introduced field hospitals, which were called ambulancia's,
Speaker 1: So that was the that referred to the field hospital,
Speaker 1: not the wagon. Now, these field hospitals were tense that
Speaker 1: had medical and surgical supplies in them, but they were
Speaker 1: very rarely used. It was hard to actually get soldiers
Speaker 1: to where they needed to be. These wagons were not
Speaker 1: terribly maneuverable, and it wouldn't really be until the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: three years later that you would actually see wounded soldiers
Speaker 1: receiving treatment and field hospitals will be carried away by
Speaker 1: an emergency vehicle on a regular basis. And that still
Speaker 1: wasn't perfect, right, Like a lot of people died on
Speaker 1: the way to or from Oh yeah, no, if you
Speaker 1: look at if you look at casualty records, Uh, one
Speaker 1: of the many reasons why researching this was getting to
Speaker 1: me today. But if you look at casualty records, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty grim story. So you see the number of
Speaker 1: people who were outright killed, and then you see the
Speaker 1: number of people who were retrieved by the folks manning
Speaker 1: the ambulance as the wagons, um, and you hear about
Speaker 1: their casualty rates, and they were extreme. I mean it was.
Speaker 1: It was not good news if you were wounded in battle. Uh.
Speaker 1: For a very very long time, the prevailing wisdom was
Speaker 1: let them let them die. I mean it really was,
Speaker 1: unless you're a higher order officer of some sort, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's tricky when we think about, um, when we
Speaker 1: think about those attrition rates, a especially when we consider
Speaker 1: a very sad fact which I'm sure you ran across
Speaker 1: as well. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, the people who were
Speaker 1: picked for the medical retrieval teams were not the crack soldiers.
Speaker 1: They weren't the smartest, they weren't the fastest. They were
Speaker 1: considered to be the ones who were least likely to
Speaker 1: actually kill the enemy. Therefore, let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: them in charge of this wagon for all the soldiers
Speaker 1: who have been wounded. Right, they were considered the grade
Speaker 1: B fighters. Yeah, yeah, it's it was. They were not
Speaker 1: picked for their ability to actually retrieve people. They were
Speaker 1: picked because they were least likely to be useful on
Speaker 1: the front lines. Um and speaking of front lines, that
Speaker 1: was part of the problem. Like these wagons were actually
Speaker 1: usually located the back of the army and they were
Speaker 1: very heavy, they're very cumbersome, so it took so much
Speaker 1: time and effort to maneuver them that offense soldiers were
Speaker 1: dying on the battlefield before they'd ever have a chance
Speaker 1: to be rescued, let alone incur any problems along the way.
Speaker 1: So this was a big issue until a French surgeon
Speaker 1: named Dominique Jean Larry designed a lightweight, two wheeled wagon
Speaker 1: to create a faster response vehicle. And they were called
Speaker 1: flying ambulances. And it's not because they could fly through
Speaker 1: the air, because they couldn't. Uh sorry, I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to cut you off there, Ben, But they were often
Speaker 1: stationed with the flying artillery, which also could not fly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sorry, this is just a bummer across the board. Well,
Speaker 1: they're called flying artillery because they were very light artillery
Speaker 1: that would be towed by horses to their location, so
Speaker 1: they could they could relocate relatively quickly, as opposed to
Speaker 1: field artillery, which was so heavy and cumbersome that you
Speaker 1: planted it and you didn't move it, you know, until
Speaker 1: the battle is over. It's staying right there. So uh,
Speaker 1: they would be stationed with the flying artillery. So these
Speaker 1: are both horse cavalry type units. They normally be cavalry
Speaker 1: support and that changes fundamentally changes somebody's odds of living
Speaker 1: or surviving a war. Oh yeah, yeah, there is a
Speaker 1: huge improvement. Some people were suggesting that it was an
Speaker 1: improvement as much as that that that you know, you
Speaker 1: had a rate of casualty that was being reduced to
Speaker 1: ten because of this. Now that was someone who was
Speaker 1: writing in support of funding more of these kind of wagons.
Speaker 1: So I doubt that it was based on any empirical research,
Speaker 1: more on more on the idea of think how many
Speaker 1: lives we could save, which still is a noble effort,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have to fudge a few numbers.
Speaker 1: But some hospitals at this time, such as the Staffordshire
Speaker 1: General Infirmary, started to employ their own ambulances. So now
Speaker 1: we start seeing ambulances in the civilian life, not just
Speaker 1: in in warfare. And these were still wagons pulled by horses.
Speaker 1: The Staffordshire's wagon was described as quote a carriage hung
Speaker 1: upon strings to be drawn by one or more horses
Speaker 1: for the conveyance of the sick or maimed end quote.
Speaker 1: And by the close of eighteenth century, organized ambulance service
Speaker 1: was starting to grow in Europe. In Europe, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: The United States was not so quick to adopt this.
Speaker 1: Ambulance service was practically absent during the beginning of the
Speaker 1: American Civil War, which if you guys aren't familiar, Uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of our listeners are from outside of the US.
Speaker 1: The American Civil War began in eighteen sixty in early
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one. And uh, you don't have any mention
Speaker 1: of ambulances in those early in those early accounts, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And this was um one of the bloodiest battles, right
Speaker 1: that people remember in the United States. And uh, some
Speaker 1: of the casualties in one of the battles, the Battle
Speaker 1: of bull Run. We're just saying this for an example.
Speaker 1: Instead of having an ambulance anywhere near, they walked twenty
Speaker 1: seven miles after they were wounded to get some sort
Speaker 1: of treatment if they survived. That's part of why there
Speaker 1: was such a horrific attrition rate in this or casualty
Speaker 1: rate rather in this um this conflict. Oh absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean not only do you have Americans versus Americans,
Speaker 1: so I mean, no matter what the casual needs, an
Speaker 1: American here's that. But then you also had just these
Speaker 1: the You had no preparedness, you had no ability to
Speaker 1: to help the people, the soldiers who had fallen. And
Speaker 1: so again it was one of those situations where if
Speaker 1: you fell in battle, if you were wounded, you know,
Speaker 1: people often would just treat you as if you had died. Um.
Speaker 1: It was only after the appointment of doctor Jonathan Letterman
Speaker 1: to the post of Surgeon General of the Army of
Speaker 1: the Potomac Medical Department. And this is where we mentioned
Speaker 1: the post of surgeon general. The United States had not
Speaker 1: been invented yet. There had there were surgeon generals in
Speaker 1: the armed forces, and this is not the surgeon General
Speaker 1: of the Army overall as a different, different post. But
Speaker 1: he uh organized soldiers into response teams to carry wounded
Speaker 1: to a site where they then could be transported to
Speaker 1: field hospitals or are even further on into general hospitals.
Speaker 1: In fact, they had sort of a a primary response
Speaker 1: site where the anything immediate would be attended to the
Speaker 1: soldiers would then be carried off to a field hospital.
Speaker 1: At the field hospital, they would then determine whether or
Speaker 1: not to treat the soldier there or to transport him
Speaker 1: further to the general hospital. So it was a much
Speaker 1: more kind of chain of command organized approach then William A. Hammond,
Speaker 1: who became Surgeon General of the U. S. Army in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixty two so the overall army standardized ambulance
Speaker 1: response and also demanded that hospitals be clean establishments, which
Speaker 1: was before back the we knew about bacteria. So his
Speaker 1: theory was that the clean establishments would save more lives,
Speaker 1: though he didn't have, you know, like a scientific reason
Speaker 1: to point to, because we hadn't discovered bacteria yet. But
Speaker 1: it turns out he was right and um and so
Speaker 1: his his approach ended up saving a lot of lives.
Speaker 1: He also demanded that there be one ambulance for every
Speaker 1: one fifties soldiers serving in the U. S. Army, and
Speaker 1: he got it, which is pretty hardcore if you think
Speaker 1: about it back then, because if we're talking about these
Speaker 1: response teams right then we're talking about a cost benefit
Speaker 1: analysis of things that are pretty expensive in war, which
Speaker 1: is training time, and cavalry. So yeah, yeah, you're pretty persuasive.
Speaker 1: You're talking about not just money, but actual people and
Speaker 1: animals resources that could be dedicated to inflicting casualties upon
Speaker 1: the animally enemy. You'll notice that I haven't really talked
Speaker 1: about the Confederates. There's a reason for that. They just
Speaker 1: they were not nearly as as organized as the as
Speaker 1: the Union was during the Civil War when it came
Speaker 1: to things like treating soldiers. Uh. Just watched the documentary
Speaker 1: film Gone with the Wind. Uh don't. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can watch it. It's not a documentary obviously. So in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four, Congress passes the Ambulance Core Act, which
Speaker 1: established a standardized system of ambulances in the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: these ambulances had distinct labels to designate them as such,
Speaker 1: and then the Geneva Convention of eighteen sixty four went
Speaker 1: further and adopted the Red Cross as the international symbol
Speaker 1: for emergency medical responders, which were to be treated as
Speaker 1: neutral parties. One thing that is just fantastic about this
Speaker 1: is that this is um and maybe it's a bit
Speaker 1: of hyperbole on my part, Jonathan, but this is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest steps I think for the human species
Speaker 1: at large, we actually took the idea of the Knights
Speaker 1: of St. John, which which wasn't I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker 1: If it is during the Crusades, they weren't always saving everybody.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of othering going on, I'm sure, but
Speaker 1: the Red Cross as this international, neutral, benevolent force that
Speaker 1: somehow must have been a great day in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: four when they all agreed to let that slide. That's
Speaker 1: amazing to me. I just wanted to stop and say,
Speaker 1: you know, good for us people. Gosh, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's also a little one of those weird things
Speaker 1: to think about the idea of we all agree that
Speaker 1: these people are not okay to shoot at, but these
Speaker 1: other people are totally okay to shoot at. This is
Speaker 1: this is where my pacifism comes in, right where I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I don't, I don't get okay whatever, so
Speaker 1: um at any rate, it is it is a great
Speaker 1: testament that we were able to come to this agreement
Speaker 1: and by and large people follow it because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it applies to everyone. It's not something where
Speaker 1: only that side gets to have the benefit of medical treatment.
Speaker 1: It's it's this this international UH initiative. So in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, the Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati is the first
Speaker 1: one in the United States to have a hospital based
Speaker 1: ambulance service. Bellevue Hospital would follow in eighteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is something car stuff listeners will enjoy.
Speaker 1: Usually we do a an inflation calculator that Scott always does.
Speaker 1: But i'll at Lee, you probably recognized this, but I'll
Speaker 1: fill in since uh, Scott is occupied at the moment.
Speaker 1: So that UH ambulance driver in eighteen sixty five there
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati would make about three hundred and sixty dollars
Speaker 1: a year in uh, you know, eighteen sixty five dollars
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, Jonathan, Uh, this is more than
Speaker 1: you would think, but still not that much. It's about
Speaker 1: five thousand, two hundred thirty dollars a year a year. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all year. I got a cut back on my Xbox consumption.
Speaker 1: And that's probably what he was thinking right before he said,
Speaker 1: what's the next box, right right before they called the
Speaker 1: second ambulance driver to pick him up, because he was
Speaker 1: talking about things that made no sense back in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five and now we're finally getting to automotives. Automotives, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The get the first motorized ambulance in Chicago. It was
Speaker 1: actually from why I understand, five hundred different business men
Speaker 1: over in Chicago, UH donated money so that this ambulance
Speaker 1: could become a reality. And so it was a motorized
Speaker 1: ambulance that was donated to Michael Reese Hospital and its
Speaker 1: top speed was a blistering sixteen miles per hour, which
Speaker 1: still when you think about it, when you have a
Speaker 1: reliable sixteen miles per hour and it's a device that
Speaker 1: doesn't get tired. It can run out of juice, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't get exhausted. Um, that's a big deal. Now,
Speaker 1: the next year, New York's St. Vincent Hospital would get
Speaker 1: its own motorized ambulance. It's horseless carriage ambulance. And these
Speaker 1: were interesting. They were not gasoline powered vehicles. These were
Speaker 1: and and Ben you know this because you've covered car
Speaker 1: stuffer so long. They were electric vehicles. The electric vehicle
Speaker 1: predates the internal combustion engine. And that store is actually
Speaker 1: so interesting that we're going to have to table it
Speaker 1: for another episode because you and I could go off
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes about that. But that is something that
Speaker 1: people need to know. And I know it sounds hard
Speaker 1: to believe, but Jonathan, your spot on the first cars
Speaker 1: were electric. Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't think of it now,
Speaker 1: because whenever you see any sort of advertisement for an
Speaker 1: electric vehicle, it's treating it like it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: a brand new idea. But this is actually older than
Speaker 1: the gasoline powered cars where we've been relying on for
Speaker 1: a century at any rate. Uh, these electrical engine ambulances
Speaker 1: they had a maximum travel distance of between twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty miles, which is pretty good. Yeah, you're talking about
Speaker 1: a city, right, You're not talking about driving from one
Speaker 1: city to the next. You're talking about an ambulance that
Speaker 1: would go out from a hospital to a specific location
Speaker 1: within a city, pick up somebody and bring it back.
Speaker 1: So bringing him or her back, and the doctor in
Speaker 1: the back of the ambulance, because they actually would allow
Speaker 1: a medical practitioner to go along, could communicate with the
Speaker 1: driver in the front through a speaking tube. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love the I love that note you have about the
Speaker 1: speaking tube. I wish we still had those cars. That
Speaker 1: sounds so much more fun than an intercom. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're be careful going around the corner. See. Yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: that that brain stuff episode about old timey voices is
Speaker 1: stuck in my head. Keep falling into it. Um. So
Speaker 1: here we are. We're approaching the twenty century. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century. We're in the twentieth century. That's right,
Speaker 1: we're early on in it because because New York's got
Speaker 1: there's nineteen hundred. I guess if you want to be technical,
Speaker 1: nineteen o one is into the twentieth century. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna be that guy. Okay. Well, early in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Major Palace of the Canadian Army introduced the first gasoline
Speaker 1: powered ambulance. Got it first, and everyone went my word
Speaker 1: or they went a yeah, one of those. Uh. At
Speaker 1: any rate, it makes sense. Canada gets pretty cold. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about fuel types when we
Speaker 1: get further into the discussion. So using gasolene made some sense.
Speaker 1: The first mass produced ambulance came from a company that
Speaker 1: sold herses. Just like Lee was mentioning, horses were vehicles
Speaker 1: that you know, we're designed to have a person laid
Speaker 1: out in the back, and so a patient who's suffering
Speaker 1: from some sort of injury or illness may feel more
Speaker 1: comfortable laying down than sitting up. And so the this
Speaker 1: company was called James Cunningham's Son and Company, and there
Speaker 1: they had a really interesting design. In fact, they were
Speaker 1: very uh advanced in automobile technology compared to there there
Speaker 1: the other cars that were on the road at the time.
Speaker 1: So again early twent century, and you end up getting
Speaker 1: this uh, this machine that has a cot in the
Speaker 1: back of it, and it had its own suspension, So
Speaker 1: the cot had its suspension independent of the vehicle, which
Speaker 1: allowed the passenger, the patient to main more comfortable. They
Speaker 1: didn't feel all the bumps that the ambulance is driving over.
Speaker 1: That can also prevent further injury too, in the case
Speaker 1: of you know, a compound break or lungs. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very important in that sense. The the ambulance itself
Speaker 1: also had pneumatic tires, which was unusual at the time.
Speaker 1: Most vehicles had solid tires. It wasn't until later that
Speaker 1: pneumatic tires became kind of standard, and these obviously also
Speaker 1: allowed for a much smoother, gentler ride than a solid
Speaker 1: rubber tire. Can you imagine what that must have felt
Speaker 1: like I had to be pretty rough. They didn't have
Speaker 1: a siren that favorite ambulances, and I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: they had a gong mounted on the side of the ambulance. No,
Speaker 1: can we get a can we get a gong? Noise?
Speaker 1: Someone must have someone must have fallen down and broken
Speaker 1: a leg or something. Yeah, So they used that in
Speaker 1: order to again same reasons that that ambulances have sirens
Speaker 1: to alert people that an ambulance was coming through so
Speaker 1: that they could make way and allow the ambulance to
Speaker 1: get to where it needed to be. Going on to
Speaker 1: the earlier point that you made, which I which I
Speaker 1: think is so profound and cannot be over emphasized. So
Speaker 1: many of the innovations in both performance and safety into
Speaker 1: automobiles today come from two places, racing or war. And
Speaker 1: it's weird when you think about it, because war still
Speaker 1: has uh. I would almost seeing even bigger parts of
Speaker 1: play in the growth of the ambulance right. So sure,
Speaker 1: because for one thing, you had to stay supply of
Speaker 1: people who needed them. So, I mean, you know just
Speaker 1: from that, but but it is You're You're making an
Speaker 1: interesting point here that both racing and war really drive innovation.
Speaker 1: One in the sense means to use a pun that
Speaker 1: one was not intentional. I usually go out of my
Speaker 1: way for these uh no, but they really do. Because
Speaker 1: you have racing where there's a lot of money involved.
Speaker 1: You want to be able to uh to get as
Speaker 1: much money as you can if you're if you're running
Speaker 1: a racing team, and you want your drivers to be
Speaker 1: safe because they're the ones earning you the money. And
Speaker 1: so you end up coming up with these innovative ways
Speaker 1: of keeping your drivers safe, which later get trickled down
Speaker 1: into other vehicles because their their efficacy is proven. And
Speaker 1: then war, obviously you have the incentive to try and
Speaker 1: keep as many of your men alive as possible on
Speaker 1: inflicting as much damage on the enemy as possible, and
Speaker 1: that requires lots of innovation. So that brings us to
Speaker 1: World War One, Terrible War nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: and this saw motorized vehicles service ambulances, but there were
Speaker 1: still a lot of horse drawn ambulances at the same time.
Speaker 1: This is a moment of transition when the automobile hasn't
Speaker 1: had universal acceptance or it's not universally available, and early
Speaker 1: versions of ambulances were just converted buses or Parisian taxis.
Speaker 1: They took taxis out of Paris and turned them into ambulances.
Speaker 1: So when the United States centered the war, the Americans
Speaker 1: brought along the Model t Ford to serve as ambulances.
Speaker 1: These were actually modified Model t Fords. They were had
Speaker 1: a had a wider carriage to be able to accept
Speaker 1: a person laying down um and they could travel speeds
Speaker 1: up to forty and they could go across much more
Speaker 1: rough terrain than your average wagon could. And there was
Speaker 1: some experiments with airlifting patients, not using airplanes or helicopters,
Speaker 1: but hot air balloons. This is crazy, actually, one the
Speaker 1: first one I've read about was in the Crimean War,
Speaker 1: but there was also some in the in World War One.
Speaker 1: And one of the methods I saw had a stretcher
Speaker 1: suspended beneath a balloon, so the balloon floats in the
Speaker 1: air carries the the stretcher. And you think, how on
Speaker 1: earth is the patients supposed to get to any place
Speaker 1: meaningful as opposed to just getting away, And it was
Speaker 1: because there there'd be a horse that would be tethered
Speaker 1: to the stretcher and the worst would you know, trod
Speaker 1: along to wherever it was supposed to go. I assumed
Speaker 1: there was also a writer, but that would go to
Speaker 1: the nearest hospital and it would tow the balloon to
Speaker 1: the hospital and us you would be able to bring
Speaker 1: the patient back down to earth if they were not
Speaker 1: shot from the sky. I mean, it's an innovative idea, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know it's not it's not perfect. Is he
Speaker 1: jumping off point right? Right? Yeah? Or a falling down? Okay?
Speaker 1: Post World War two? All right, So World War two
Speaker 1: obviously more developments in the ambulance. By then we had
Speaker 1: really switched to automobiles. But post World War Two you
Speaker 1: also saw urban growth exploding and it meant that we
Speaker 1: needed more ambulance services. So you have a lot more areas,
Speaker 1: like you know, there were cities like London in Paris
Speaker 1: that have been huge for hundreds of years. But in
Speaker 1: general we started to see more of a move from
Speaker 1: agriculture to urban environments. This is the same time as
Speaker 1: we're starting to see like some some really big developments
Speaker 1: in industry that's just pushing people towards that. And so
Speaker 1: it meant that we had a larger need for ambulance
Speaker 1: services in cities, and that need was starting to be
Speaker 1: met by various approaches. Again, many of these ambulances were
Speaker 1: converted horses, but these didn't have a lot of room
Speaker 1: for an attendant. You couldn't really have a medical professional
Speaker 1: in the back who could easily attend to any person.
Speaker 1: You Essentially, we're just moving the injured person to a hospital.
Speaker 1: So the standard thinking was that treatment would begin once
Speaker 1: he got to the hospital, right. Yeah. And now, of course,
Speaker 1: if you have ever been in an ambulance, seen one,
Speaker 1: or just even watch TV, you know that treatment begins
Speaker 1: the moment E M S arrives. But up until this point,
Speaker 1: there wasn't really an E M S thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was again it was one of those ideas where
Speaker 1: the people who were best qualified to treat the patient,
Speaker 1: we're all at the hospit spittle or or urgent care
Speaker 1: center or whatever, something along those lines, and the idea
Speaker 1: was you had to get the patient to that person.
Speaker 1: There wasn't so much of an idea of having medically
Speaker 1: trained people go out to see the patient and attend
Speaker 1: to the patient while they are being transported back to
Speaker 1: a hospital or other facility. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties that we really see that birth of the
Speaker 1: emergency medical services movement, and this is where we would
Speaker 1: see people who were treating trained in medical emergency uh
Speaker 1: techniques to try and go out and treat people and
Speaker 1: give them a better chance of recovery or survival, even
Speaker 1: depending on the nature of the illness or injury. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we know that this eventually leads to um leads
Speaker 1: to more improvements in the typical ambulance because also the
Speaker 1: as strange as this sounds, uh, the ambulances that were
Speaker 1: used before this time didn't necessarily have of medical equipment
Speaker 1: on board. R Yeah. It was essentially a moving bed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's really what it got boils down to,
Speaker 1: is that, uh. You know again, a lot of the
Speaker 1: ambulances were just meant to allow people to take a
Speaker 1: wounded or sick person to the hospital. That's it. But
Speaker 1: it changed once we started getting medical professionals on board. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty five there was the Accidental Death
Speaker 1: and Disability Paper, which I think was actually published in
Speaker 1: sixty six, written in sixty five, published in sixty six,
Speaker 1: and it called for a new type of ambulance to
Speaker 1: provide space for the not just the patient, but also
Speaker 1: in attendant end equipment. The idea here being we can
Speaker 1: treat this person as soon as we're able to make
Speaker 1: contact with them. As soon as we get to where
Speaker 1: they are, we treatment can begin at that moment. There's
Speaker 1: no need to put it off until they are at
Speaker 1: the hospital. That too many lives are being lost. Too
Speaker 1: many or even if the life isn't law, the quality
Speaker 1: of life declines sharply if they aren't able to receive
Speaker 1: help as early as possible. So the nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: e M S Systems Act required that communities receiving federal
Speaker 1: funds for their programs had to have ambulances that met
Speaker 1: federal specifications, which included things like they're you know, crash
Speaker 1: test rating or having um A B S or you
Speaker 1: know other elements as we've been down to the frequency
Speaker 1: of maintenance. Y. Yeah, you had to be able to
Speaker 1: meet these qualifications in order for you to receive that funding,
Speaker 1: otherwise you could have the funding cut off. There are
Speaker 1: three types of chassiss that were established by this and
Speaker 1: those three types are still the types we we refer
Speaker 1: to today. So you've got type one, which uses a
Speaker 1: small truck body with a modular component in the back
Speaker 1: Type two, which is I think the most prevalent type
Speaker 1: here in the United States at least. It has a
Speaker 1: van body with a ray roof, and Type three has
Speaker 1: a van chassis but with a modular component in the back.
Speaker 1: And in the United States, these will all have something
Speaker 1: called the Star of Life. We've all seen this. It's
Speaker 1: a blue uh, six pointed star uh with the with
Speaker 1: the rod in the middle right and then the snake
Speaker 1: on it, you know, the whole nine uh. This was
Speaker 1: originally designed by the U S National Traffic Safety Administration,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like a it's weird because it's
Speaker 1: it's trademarked by them, but it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: mark of authenticity for E M S vehicles and for ambulances,
Speaker 1: um or and even you know, of course, you see
Speaker 1: a paramedic, they will usually have that somewhere on their
Speaker 1: on their body. And this you'll see on our notes here.
Speaker 1: I had this as we could skip this, but it's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's keep it okay, alright, cool. The next time you
Speaker 1: look at one of these six pointed stars on the
Speaker 1: side of an ambulance or a paramedic, it looks almost
Speaker 1: like an asterisk. It pretty it looks way more like
Speaker 1: an asterisk than it does like a star, you know,
Speaker 1: because it has it has flat ends, so it's more
Speaker 1: like three bars laid over one another. Each of these
Speaker 1: projecting points stands for one of the things that emergency
Speaker 1: services do. There's detection, reporting, response on seen care, care
Speaker 1: and transit, and then transfer to definitive care. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's interesting because I always wonder about the logic behind
Speaker 1: a logo, you know, um where where, because everybody who
Speaker 1: makes one of these has a story. Sure like the
Speaker 1: Red Cross, right the Right to st John, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't. Typically when you're making a logo, you don't
Speaker 1: want it to to You wanted to have some sort
Speaker 1: of significance or whatever it is you're doing right you
Speaker 1: want you wanted to tell its own story so that
Speaker 1: not only do people recognize it as your logo, but
Speaker 1: they at least get that there's some sort of significance
Speaker 1: to it. I always I feel so dumb because Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I always assumed that they just stuck a logo on
Speaker 1: there because they said, hey, you know what, let's let
Speaker 1: people know this is an ambulance. Well, to be fair, Ben,
Speaker 1: that could be the answer and it could be that
Speaker 1: these six points were retro cond you know, totally you know,
Speaker 1: reckon the whole thing. But I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: It also makes me think that if if you're hurt
Speaker 1: and a van pulls up and it doesn't have this
Speaker 1: mark on it, don't get into the van. Not the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, that's the first thing that that occurred
Speaker 1: to me when you were talking about this. No, we
Speaker 1: we name the three types right that they have there,
Speaker 1: but UH ambulances, as we established at the top, don't
Speaker 1: have to necessarily be a car automobile. Yeah, they they
Speaker 1: can be, and in fact, i'd say the vast majority
Speaker 1: of them are, but they can also be boats or helicopters,
Speaker 1: fixed wing aircraft or even other vehicles. And emergency ambulances
Speaker 1: are you know, the ones that we think of that's
Speaker 1: the most common type, the emergency ambulances, the type that
Speaker 1: has a medical professional in it um at least one
Speaker 1: usually to UH, and that can treat you on the
Speaker 1: way to a medical facility like a hospital. But there
Speaker 1: are other types of ambulances as well, like charity ambulances,
Speaker 1: which technically what they do is they transport patients to
Speaker 1: some other location for you know, maybe an outing. So
Speaker 1: think of like a children's hospital where there's an organized
Speaker 1: trip to take children from the children's hospital to some
Speaker 1: location like a zoo or essentially what is similar to
Speaker 1: a field trip. So there are other ambulances as well
Speaker 1: that are designed to carry patients or to get medical
Speaker 1: professionals to patients, but emergency ambulances are the ones we're
Speaker 1: focusing on because those are the ones that I think
Speaker 1: most people when they hear the word ambulance, that's what
Speaker 1: they're thinking about, right, And even more specifically we're talking
Speaker 1: about the van based ones because there's a very interesting
Speaker 1: story about how these are created. Yeah, it takes a
Speaker 1: it takes a village, or at least two different manufacturers
Speaker 1: in general. So you may think, like, well, where do
Speaker 1: ambulances come from? Who makes them? Like what what car
Speaker 1: company makes them? And there's no single answer for that.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are lots of different car companies that
Speaker 1: make the chassiss that end up being used as ambulances.
Speaker 1: And then you have other manufacturers that are not the
Speaker 1: big car companies that make the various compartments like the
Speaker 1: actual you know, maybe the modular components in some cases
Speaker 1: or in other cases they get they get possession of
Speaker 1: the chassis that was manufactured by the first company, and
Speaker 1: then they put in all the stuff like the fittings,
Speaker 1: the medical equipment, all the kind of thing that actually
Speaker 1: makes it an ambulance, the tech that will will talk
Speaker 1: about in just a bit. And then they're also the
Speaker 1: second manufacturer is typically the one who has to build
Speaker 1: to that federal code. Yes, yeah, they build out that
Speaker 1: whole interior. They have to meet the code and the
Speaker 1: chat see obviously has to meet the requirements of things
Speaker 1: like the crash tests, but the rest of it also
Speaker 1: has to meet those same requirements. So it's interesting that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say, you know, because you think of you
Speaker 1: think of vehicles usually as a single manufacturer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a Dodge such and such, you know that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Whereas Dodge does make the chassis for some ambulances.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you can't say the ambulance is
Speaker 1: a blank vehicle. It's a type of vehicle, just like
Speaker 1: a van is a type of vehicle, or sedan is
Speaker 1: a type of vehicle. Yeah, that's a great point, and
Speaker 1: they're so so varied in terms of just size, type, shape, function.
Speaker 1: It really reminds me of limousines. Actually, yeah, because a
Speaker 1: lot of limos are custom custom coach jobs too. That's
Speaker 1: what it's called when a manufacturer is building something, uh
Speaker 1: to specification rather than to um production numbers, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. So we know also that this even goes
Speaker 1: down to uh oh, this is a point you made earlier.
Speaker 1: This even comes down to what sort of fuel they use.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, because if you are in a cold area,
Speaker 1: then you may not want to use diesel fuel. See,
Speaker 1: diesel is often used in the warmer climates. It's it's
Speaker 1: often thought of as being more efficient and also safer
Speaker 1: because uh and if you are responding to let's say
Speaker 1: a fire, then a gasoline powered vehicle is considered to
Speaker 1: be dangerous because gasoline is very, very flammable, Diesel not
Speaker 1: as much. So yeah, so, so diesel vehicles are often
Speaker 1: used um in warmer climates, but in cold climates, diesel
Speaker 1: engines take time to warm up to actually work. Anyone
Speaker 1: who's operated a diesel vehicle up in the Great White
Speaker 1: North knows what I'm talking about, So they often will
Speaker 1: use gasoline powered vehicles instead. Uh, you might find gasoline
Speaker 1: powered vehicles in warmer climates to it kind of just
Speaker 1: depends upon whatever the company that's running the ambulance has ordered. Right.
Speaker 1: There are quite a few companies and US partially or
Speaker 1: Holy State owned enterprises. The more and more we learn
Speaker 1: about ambulances, the more we learned that while they all
Speaker 1: have the same aim for the most part, they have
Speaker 1: that their myriad ways to get there. And uh. One
Speaker 1: great note about the diesel fuel, right is, of course
Speaker 1: you can't use a fuel, no matter how efficient it is,
Speaker 1: you can't use the fuel that will slow you down
Speaker 1: in these situations. I mean, you can't even really stop
Speaker 1: for traffic lights or anything, which is why you have
Speaker 1: those famous ambulance sirens and lights. What's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is that the very first motorized ambulances had these electric
Speaker 1: lights that were mounted on the outside to help people
Speaker 1: be alerted to the fact that there was an ambulance
Speaker 1: coming through. I think it was the New York one
Speaker 1: that had the first ones. Yeah, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Now sirens came a little later, but this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that we see common across emergency response vehicles,
Speaker 1: whether it's police ambulance, fire engines, etcetera. And obviously they
Speaker 1: all have the same uh need or the same aim,
Speaker 1: which is to alert people. Hey, you know there, we
Speaker 1: have got someplace. We have got to be very quickly.
Speaker 1: People's lives depend on it. Please move out the way.
Speaker 1: And so obviously, if you're in the United States, you
Speaker 1: know what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to pull
Speaker 1: over to the side of the road and stop your vehicle,
Speaker 1: not crawl along. You stop, you allow the emergency vehicles
Speaker 1: to pass, and then you can resume normal operation. Uh.
Speaker 1: So those lights and sirens. Uh, it's interesting. You know
Speaker 1: you've probably wondered. I actually had a conversation about this
Speaker 1: with friends of mine not too long ago about if
Speaker 1: you hear a siren going off, you see the lights
Speaker 1: going off, you wonder is there someone in that vehicle,
Speaker 1: like a patient? Is there a patient in that vehicle
Speaker 1: or are they on their way to get a patient? Well,
Speaker 1: you can't really tell, except to say that statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: it's far more likely if the siren is on and
Speaker 1: the lights are going that there is not a patient
Speaker 1: in the back. Generally speaking, the rules say and the rules,
Speaker 1: by the way, they vary from region to region, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the rules say that if you are on
Speaker 1: your way to try and and respond to someone who
Speaker 1: has need of an ambulance. That's when you use the
Speaker 1: lights and the sirens in order to get to where
Speaker 1: you need to go as quickly as possible while treating
Speaker 1: the patient. In order not to put place more stress
Speaker 1: on the patient and also not to put more stress
Speaker 1: on the driver who needs to make sure they get
Speaker 1: to the hospital safely. They often will not use the
Speaker 1: lights or sirens unless the patient is in a critical
Speaker 1: state where they absolutely need to be able to get
Speaker 1: to health care like a hospital as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: You know that makes sense because I was having a conversation,
Speaker 1: probably not with the same people I was having this conversation.
Speaker 1: Were you in that same group? Was that one of
Speaker 1: those moments where we just refused to acknowledge each other's existence.
Speaker 1: I mean, it happens. It happens. We spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time hanging out their ups and downs. But no, uh,
Speaker 1: this is strange because I had a conversation that dovetailed
Speaker 1: with this, which was one of my friends complaining about
Speaker 1: seeing an ambulance. She maintained that it had its lights
Speaker 1: on just to get through an intersection, and then it's
Speaker 1: turned them off or um. She said she had seen
Speaker 1: police officers do this as well. But I think my
Speaker 1: position in this was that we don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on in the vehicle, we don't know what orders they're receiving.
Speaker 1: So let's try not to be too judgmental if we
Speaker 1: see an ambulance, you know, appear to flick its lights
Speaker 1: erratically or something like that, because you know, they may
Speaker 1: have had their call canceled, somebody else may have picked
Speaker 1: it up. And for Pete's sake, E m t s
Speaker 1: are not paid enough. I don't care what anyone says.
Speaker 1: And and it's quite possible that they have a patient
Speaker 1: in the back because, uh, one of the times they
Speaker 1: can use their lights and sirens, you know, outside of
Speaker 1: of when they're trying to get to a patient, is
Speaker 1: whenever they are going to use any moving privilege. That's
Speaker 1: what you were talking about a second ago. Moving privilege
Speaker 1: is the privilege that emergency vehicles have to go through
Speaker 1: things like stop signs, red lights, um, go go into
Speaker 1: opposing traffic, you know, things that you are really not
Speaker 1: supposed to do. Emergency vehicles can do under special situations,
Speaker 1: and in those situations, that's they are required actually to
Speaker 1: run the lights and siren because they have to alert
Speaker 1: the traffic that normally would be going through that intersection
Speaker 1: or going that opposite way of travel that they are
Speaker 1: coming through. And it's quite possible that you know, it's
Speaker 1: again in order to get a patient to the hospital,
Speaker 1: and it may be that the patients, um, uh, their
Speaker 1: state is such that they need to get there soon.
Speaker 1: They're not so critical that they need to be running
Speaker 1: the siren and lights the entire time, but they need
Speaker 1: to get through this intersection. They can't stop for traffic.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you at the end of
Speaker 1: this regarding regarding this very point, but we'll we'll hold
Speaker 1: it there. UM. I think you already pointed out that
Speaker 1: when New York launched this uh, this motorized ambulance or
Speaker 1: excuse me, not motorized, their first ambulance system, uh, that
Speaker 1: horse drawn cart going at its bustle blistering four miles
Speaker 1: per hour, and they needed some lights to let everybody know. Um.
Speaker 1: There were also not any federal standards for light based
Speaker 1: ambulance alerts for a very long time. So it's all
Speaker 1: of this customization and variation. Um. You know, if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard a siren. You hear that it always has
Speaker 1: at least two tones usually and and it oscillates between
Speaker 1: the two, right. And you know why that is too,
Speaker 1: because the sound there makes it easier to hear. If
Speaker 1: it's coming toward you, it's going to way. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: you've got the Doppler effect. Where it's coming towards you,
Speaker 1: it's a higher pitched and as it's going away it's
Speaker 1: a lower pitch. But either way you identify that as
Speaker 1: the sound of an emergency vehicle, right, yes. And also
Speaker 1: this this variation, though, means that ambulances would have different
Speaker 1: sounds or different colors of light for such a long time,
Speaker 1: such a long time in fact, and this irritates the
Speaker 1: heck out of me. That it is still a patchwork,
Speaker 1: at least in the United States, state by state right.
Speaker 1: For instance, in Minnesota, you can only use blue lights
Speaker 1: on a vehicle if it's a snowplow or road maintenance
Speaker 1: UH set up. But in Illinois all the medical or
Speaker 1: fire emergency vehicles have to use blue UH. So these
Speaker 1: things go state by state, and the rules for one
Speaker 1: ambulance may not apply in the next state over. So
Speaker 1: if I see flashing lights as I go state by state,
Speaker 1: I won't ness necessarily be able to say with any authority, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's got to be a blank, because the regulations in
Speaker 1: that state could be different, where the light color could
Speaker 1: mean a completely And it's a snowplow, which I would
Speaker 1: already be confused because we don't have those here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: So on we have three, Yeah, we do have three?
Speaker 1: Three do we buy a new one yet? I think
Speaker 1: we really just have to. I think we really do
Speaker 1: only have to. But we have several several salt trucks though.
Speaker 1: Oh good bully for us. So part of the reason
Speaker 1: you guys are probably asking yourselves, Jonathan ben if it's
Speaker 1: been so long, why isn't there a better uniform rule
Speaker 1: for ambulances. Well, part of the problem is, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's a scientific debate going on. People are trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to hit the balance of the right color,
Speaker 1: sound and frequency of siren, uh, such that they can
Speaker 1: alert drivers without distracting them and causing more accidents. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: One thing you don't want to do when you are
Speaker 1: designing your emergency medical response strategy is to create more emergencies. Right,
Speaker 1: to have some kind of clason that just makes people's
Speaker 1: teeth vibrate and feel. If the jelly in your eyes
Speaker 1: starts to solidify, then that's clearly not what you wanted
Speaker 1: in your emergency response vehicle. And so until there's more, uh,
Speaker 1: until there's a larger body of research behind this, people
Speaker 1: are very very hesitant to try to translate good intentions
Speaker 1: into policy. Um. And you know there are researchers who
Speaker 1: are working at this, like Michael Flanagan at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan but are at their Transportation Research Institute. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: Dr Flanagan, And uh, what we're hoping for is that
Speaker 1: and some point, the sooner the better, there will be
Speaker 1: some kind of uniform code. But also at this point
Speaker 1: kind of roped into it because so many states and
Speaker 1: so many private and publicly owned ambulance companies have already
Speaker 1: vested so much money and they have a they have
Speaker 1: a fleet of vehicles that are already designed as you
Speaker 1: would have to retrofit all these vehicles, not that that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavor, but that costs money. And
Speaker 1: you know that when you get down to it. When
Speaker 1: we talk about businesses that provide ambulance service, it's a business.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a little bit. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what happens when someone does
Speaker 1: call for an ambulance, Like what's the process. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna go through the whole nine one one route because
Speaker 1: that's a very very common one here. Um if it's
Speaker 1: if you're in the UK, it's O one one, remember
Speaker 1: that episode the I T crowd. Um, but nine one one,
Speaker 1: So if you were to dial nine one one or
Speaker 1: I believe in the UK, the way it works is
Speaker 1: operators will dispatch an ambulance according to zone. So wherever
Speaker 1: you are, you know you've called in the ambulance. Uh,
Speaker 1: they will look at the zone that you are in.
Speaker 1: It will correspond to whatever you know address you gave,
Speaker 1: and then they will look at the ambulances that are
Speaker 1: available in that zone. There there are companies that are
Speaker 1: responsible for specific zones within a region. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you've got an ambulance team that is employed at least
Speaker 1: in part by some company. Uh. The the company runs
Speaker 1: the ambulance fleet and they are responsible for a given
Speaker 1: area within a region, and they get that called. Then
Speaker 1: the ambulance team itself typically includes in the United States
Speaker 1: at least one paramedic and one emergency medical technician or
Speaker 1: e m T. Now I say this, but keep in
Speaker 1: mind that these terms aren't universal, that it's not like
Speaker 1: there's a definition of what one is, and and that
Speaker 1: applies across the entire world. In the United States, there's
Speaker 1: actually two different levels of e m T. There's basic
Speaker 1: and intermediate, and then you have paramedic. Uh And you
Speaker 1: might be confused. You might wonder what's the difference between
Speaker 1: the two. I I certainly was. I'm not well versed
Speaker 1: in this, so I aim, yeah, so I'm emergency medical
Speaker 1: technician paramedic. You might not even know just on hearing
Speaker 1: those two, if you aren't in the medical field, you
Speaker 1: might not know which of those two is allowed to
Speaker 1: do more extensive medical procedures. Uh. So the answer to
Speaker 1: that is the paramedics. Paramedics have to complete between twelve
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen hundred hours of training compared to e
Speaker 1: m T s who have to do around a HU. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's because again the nature of the work that
Speaker 1: each person can do on a patient. But you I
Speaker 1: need to stress both of these both of these types
Speaker 1: of careers require attendance to lectures, hands on training, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't. I do not wish at all to disparage
Speaker 1: e m T s because they do amazing work and
Speaker 1: they have to go through a lot of training in
Speaker 1: order to do it. So in fact, e m T
Speaker 1: s have to have to be able to demonstrate life
Speaker 1: saving skills including CPR, administering oxygen, administering glucose for diabetics. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are not, though in general, at least allowed to
Speaker 1: provide treatments that break the skin, so no needles are allowed,
Speaker 1: with a couple of exceptions, things like severe asthma attacks
Speaker 1: or an allergic reaction. Those can be allowed. Because I
Speaker 1: have severe allergies, it gets to a point where I
Speaker 1: cannot swallow a pill, right, so I have to have
Speaker 1: an injection. I am personally thankful that that is an
Speaker 1: exception to that rule. So what do paramedics do then,
Speaker 1: So they're advanced emergency medical care providers. They build on
Speaker 1: those e m T skills with even more skills and
Speaker 1: more tasks that they can do, such as administering medicine
Speaker 1: or starting an I V line in the back of
Speaker 1: an ambulance. So they're allowed to use need tosh. They
Speaker 1: are trained in that they're allowed to administer medication to
Speaker 1: a patient. Usually the medications we'll talk about all the
Speaker 1: equipment on there, but I might as well mention it here.
Speaker 1: Medications that are usually included in an ambulance are the
Speaker 1: ones needed for those emergency responses. It's the most common
Speaker 1: type of medications that are needed for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Epinephrin would be a big one, for example. Um but uh,
Speaker 1: and you know you have to be really careful obviously,
Speaker 1: because sometimes those medications include things like narcotics. So uh.
Speaker 1: Ambulance teams are are responsible for the inventory inside their vehicles,
Speaker 1: which means that if you find out that you have
Speaker 1: a shortage of narcotics in your vehicle, you have some
Speaker 1: serious explaining to do. I mean, they have a huge
Speaker 1: amount of accountability in that department, absolutely understandably. So how
Speaker 1: speaking of accountability, how long does it take them to
Speaker 1: respond to a call? Okay, well, that's that's a great question. Again,
Speaker 1: it varies region by region. I thought I would pick
Speaker 1: one of the most famed slee congested areas in the
Speaker 1: United States, the city known for the worst traffic in
Speaker 1: the US, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, I believe takes number one,
Speaker 1: if if not it's at least culturally referred to as
Speaker 1: the worst traffic in the US. Atlanta is pretty bad,
Speaker 1: but l A is worse. Uh So Los Angeles. An
Speaker 1: ambulance is supposed to be able to get to a
Speaker 1: patient within eight minutes fifty nine seconds of receiving the
Speaker 1: call from the nine one one dispatcher. So just a
Speaker 1: hair under nine minutes, that's how long they have to
Speaker 1: get to the the person. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty fast,
Speaker 1: considering again that this is a major, sprawling city. Now
Speaker 1: granted again, that's why they divide them up into zones, right,
Speaker 1: because if you just had the entire city as the
Speaker 1: place where you worked, then you might take an hour
Speaker 1: to get to somebody, and that's not acceptable, and they
Speaker 1: may not always be going to the closest hospital, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen an ambulance that has its sirens on,
Speaker 1: its lights on, or maybe maybe it doesn't, but you
Speaker 1: just see them driving with purpose, like it's clear they're
Speaker 1: they're making their way someplace, and they're driving past a hospital.
Speaker 1: You might ask yourself, well, why aren't they going into
Speaker 1: that hospital? And it's because the team has to weigh
Speaker 1: the patients. Uh The nature of the patient's problem with
Speaker 1: the various locations that are nearby, so they may not
Speaker 1: go to the closest hospital if that hospital is not
Speaker 1: well equipped to handle certain kinds of medical emergencies. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if there's a hospital that has a really
Speaker 1: good cardiac arrest response team and it's a little further
Speaker 1: away than the hospital it's closer in but doesn't really
Speaker 1: have that that equipment, yeah, then the ambulance can go
Speaker 1: to that other hospital. By the way, you can ask
Speaker 1: the ambulance drivers to take you to a specific hospital
Speaker 1: if you want to. You can say I want to
Speaker 1: go to this particular hospital. You can do that. However,
Speaker 1: that ambulance team may or may not fulfill your request.
Speaker 1: It will depend on how far away that hospital is.
Speaker 1: That if that hospital is way outside the ambulance team's zone,
Speaker 1: then they say, listen, we're gonna have to take you
Speaker 1: to this other place. It's closer. They are well equipped
Speaker 1: to deal with your your emergency, and uh, and we
Speaker 1: just we can't go that far to take you to
Speaker 1: this other place, right, And a lot of our more
Speaker 1: cynical listeners might be saying, well, yeah, of course you're
Speaker 1: gonna take in the farthest hospital away, so he can
Speaker 1: rack up the bill. But that's not that's not however,
Speaker 1: they don't run a meter. They're not. It's not an
Speaker 1: uber or yeah so, but but your trips can cost
Speaker 1: a pretty penny. I mean like they can rape. They
Speaker 1: can go up way above a thousand dollars for a
Speaker 1: single trip, four hundreds not unusual. Now, Typically insurance will
Speaker 1: end up paying for ambulance services, depending as long as
Speaker 1: the the the it is uh determined that it was merited. Right,
Speaker 1: if you stub your toe and you call an ambulance
Speaker 1: and you ride in the ambulance and they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you stubbed your toe, you know in a day, it's
Speaker 1: gonna feel better. You can bet that insurance is not
Speaker 1: going to cover that particular expense, right because it wasn't
Speaker 1: life threatening. Here's okay, here's the thing. Let's do this
Speaker 1: instead of a stubb stub toe situation, Let's go hypothetical. Alright,
Speaker 1: don't don't really, I will really hit you. So, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: here's what happened. You were at work and uh, someone
Speaker 1: I won't name a coword or Josh Clark. Okay, so
Speaker 1: Josh had convinced become convinced that our office was haunted,
Speaker 1: and he invited a ghost hunter. This is like last week,
Speaker 1: and after you got so irritated because the ghost hunter
Speaker 1: is actually in our office and the fact that the
Speaker 1: ghost hunter one exists and two is in my friend
Speaker 1: field of vision, right, and so you get so infuriated
Speaker 1: that you uh that you kick like a baseboard. Alright,
Speaker 1: and so you've got a broken foot, but it's like
Speaker 1: seriously broken. They haul you call nine one one. Let's
Speaker 1: say they're in there. In like five minutes. We're rushing
Speaker 1: you downstairs. You're still cursing at the ghost hunter, and
Speaker 1: they hop you onto the ambulance. What do you see
Speaker 1: when you get inside? What's the gear? Okay? I like that?
Speaker 1: That was the like that's awesome. Okay, Well I'm glad
Speaker 1: you asked ben. Alright, So your typical ambulance has a
Speaker 1: gurney in it. That's the that's the cot that's usually
Speaker 1: on wheels that they with the legs that extend out.
Speaker 1: So when you pull the gurney out from the back
Speaker 1: of the ambulance, the legs extend. You can then wheel
Speaker 1: the guurney to the patient, put the patient on, and
Speaker 1: then when you wheel it back in. They'll you can
Speaker 1: let the legs contract and push the gurney back into
Speaker 1: it's lays flat or flat ish against the floor of
Speaker 1: the ambulance compartment. Yeah, that's great. The paramedic will get
Speaker 1: in the back of the ambulance with you. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is actually a bench usually in most of these van
Speaker 1: ambulances where typically uh they're used if you ever have
Speaker 1: to transport to people at the same time, although most
Speaker 1: ambulance crews will do their best to avoid that because
Speaker 1: it divides the attention of the medical personnel really and
Speaker 1: they can't guarantee that each person is going to get
Speaker 1: the best response. So normally you want to send as
Speaker 1: many ambulances as you have people who who need them,
Speaker 1: which is why you'll see multiple ambulances on a scene. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: occasionally that you know, what is ideal and what is
Speaker 1: real don't match up, and you have to transport to
Speaker 1: people at the same time, and that's why there's a
Speaker 1: bench in there as well. Uh. You will also start
Speaker 1: seeing lots of equipment, some of it you might not
Speaker 1: see because it's stowed away. Ambulances are kind of like
Speaker 1: I think of it like the International Space Station, right,
Speaker 1: you have. You have very limited space, and you want
Speaker 1: to carry as much life saving equipment as you possibly can,
Speaker 1: stuff that you might need in any given a cool emergency.
Speaker 1: And there are tons of different medical emergencies, so you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of different potential stuff to carry with you.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like playing Dungeons and Dragons. You're like,
Speaker 1: I want to have every possible thing that my character
Speaker 1: might need on any given adventure, and then you're told yes,
Speaker 1: but you have to worry about weight and incumbrance, and
Speaker 1: you think, why can I just have a magical bag
Speaker 1: of holding thing that makes everything. Ambulances don't have a
Speaker 1: bag of holding, so you have to put all that
Speaker 1: stuff someplace. So pretty much every square inch of that
Speaker 1: interior is holding some equipment or or equipment is hanging
Speaker 1: off of a hook. It all depends on what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, but that equipment is pretty much what you
Speaker 1: would find in a standard emergency room, with a couple
Speaker 1: of exceptions. There's no X ray machine doesn't really fit,
Speaker 1: you know, making everyone put on lead driving down um.
Speaker 1: There's also no lab, so they can't run any tests
Speaker 1: or anything. They can just respond to two things that
Speaker 1: are are apparent Okay, Yeah, so then that would be
Speaker 1: stuff that will that will just give you a quick,
Speaker 1: quick look at what you need to do immediately to
Speaker 1: the patient. Yeah. So it's again you're trying to stabilize
Speaker 1: the patient as much as possible so that you can
Speaker 1: get the patient to hospital care where a more detailed
Speaker 1: analysis can take place. So if we're talking in the
Speaker 1: case of illness as opposed to a broken foot, then
Speaker 1: that would mean they would treat any symptoms that were
Speaker 1: life threatening, but otherwise not really mess with the patient
Speaker 1: too much because they can't they can't determine exactly what's wrong, right,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of pointless at this stage in technology
Speaker 1: to have a lab on a on a vehicle like this,
Speaker 1: because labs wouldn't work quickly enough. No, you you would
Speaker 1: get to the hospital faster than you would receive any
Speaker 1: unless you're just like tooling around town, which seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty you know, inappropriate use of resources to me.
Speaker 1: But they do have other stuff. They do have diagnostic
Speaker 1: of equipment like blood pressure cuffs, you know, things that
Speaker 1: being able to take a patient's vitals quickly are that's important,
Speaker 1: So stethoscope, that sort of stuff. They also have monitoring
Speaker 1: equipment like a cardiac monitor to track a patient's heartbeat,
Speaker 1: clearly important, especially if the patient has um suffered a
Speaker 1: heart attack, cardiac arrest or something like that. Uh. They
Speaker 1: have response equipment, so this is the stuff that they
Speaker 1: use to respond to emergency situations. So if you were
Speaker 1: to go into cardiac arrest, they have a defibri later
Speaker 1: so they can do the whole clear and you know,
Speaker 1: you've seen it a billion times in movies to try
Speaker 1: and zap your heart back into into action. They also
Speaker 1: have bandages and gauds for treating wounds. UH. They have
Speaker 1: you know, like the stretcher board, the solid stretcher board
Speaker 1: you pribce see these these are those are meant to
Speaker 1: immobilize a patient. So if a patient has suffered like
Speaker 1: a back injury or a broken limb that needs to
Speaker 1: be immobilized, they can use that. They also have splints,
Speaker 1: including inflatable splints a lot of times where because they
Speaker 1: don't take up a space when they're not inflated, right,
Speaker 1: So then you put them around the wound, you you
Speaker 1: inflate them and they they they stabilize the limb so
Speaker 1: that you're not able to uh further injury yourself. Um,
Speaker 1: that includes neck injuries, lem injuries, that kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they also have airway equipment specifically to help
Speaker 1: patients who are having trouble breathing, or perhaps are are
Speaker 1: simply having respiratory distress, like someone who maybe was in
Speaker 1: a building that caught fire. They didn't suffer any burns,
Speaker 1: but they may have suffered smoke inhalation. You know, this
Speaker 1: would be something used for them. So these are usually
Speaker 1: tools that either help a patient breathe or will breathe
Speaker 1: for a patient. UH. Includes oxygen tanks, so those will
Speaker 1: be in the back of an ambulance as well. Probably
Speaker 1: won't be needed for my broken foot. I think if
Speaker 1: they were to they were to administer oxygen, things have
Speaker 1: gone well beyond the broken foot problem. You probably also
Speaker 1: won't need this next thing, not the OBI kuit. No, No,
Speaker 1: unless my broken foot has broken the rules of of
Speaker 1: God and man where suddenly I've become incredibly pregnant. No.
Speaker 1: The OBI kit is for for ambulance teams that have
Speaker 1: to do an emergency delivery. And by emergency delivery, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about a person. So so let's say that an ambulance,
Speaker 1: you know, an expectant mother calls an ambulance because her
Speaker 1: she has no one to take her to the hospital,
Speaker 1: she can't take herself born early or there's some kind
Speaker 1: of weird pain. Yeah, she's she's going into labor unexpectedly, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever the reason. Ambulance cruise carry ob kits, and that
Speaker 1: contains all the supplies that an ambulance uh like a
Speaker 1: paramedic would need in order to deliver a baby on
Speaker 1: the move if the baby has decided that the baby
Speaker 1: is not gonna wait, and so it involves things like
Speaker 1: latex gloves, gauze, umbilical clamps, scalpel uh how polls, like
Speaker 1: all the sort of stuff is in your typical obi
Speaker 1: quit actually looked this up online. I was looking at
Speaker 1: a company that sells the equipment to ambulances, and I
Speaker 1: looked I was like, huh, obi kit inquired, like I'm
Speaker 1: curious to find out what's in this. That's how I know,
Speaker 1: because this is in a world that is far removed
Speaker 1: for me. The eagle scout me wants to buy one
Speaker 1: and just have it in my car, But I know
Speaker 1: I will totally just lose my marbles if I'm ever
Speaker 1: in that situation, which I would just I would give
Speaker 1: you three days before you get so bored that you
Speaker 1: start using the umbilical clamps for something incredibly inappropriate attentions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you mentioned medication too, yep. So that includes things
Speaker 1: like any histamines and friend uh, anything that could be
Speaker 1: used for treating life threatening injuries or illnesses. That sort
Speaker 1: of stuff is going to be there. There's you know,
Speaker 1: most of these medications are given intravenously. That's why you
Speaker 1: need a paramedic. Um, so you're using an i V.
Speaker 1: So there's also i V equipment and needles and things
Speaker 1: like that on or an ambulance, so they be the
Speaker 1: E M T driving paramedic. And some companies, some companies,
Speaker 1: it all depends again on the region, not just in
Speaker 1: the United States. I'm talking about globally here. Some companies
Speaker 1: have ambulance drivers who are not medically rated at all.
Speaker 1: They might have a first Aid certificate, but they their
Speaker 1: purpose is to drive the vehicle. They're just awes. Yeah uh.
Speaker 1: And in other places they the person who's behind the
Speaker 1: wheel is fully qualified to treat emergency medical situations. It
Speaker 1: all depends upon the area. So how do they talk
Speaker 1: to each other? Well, they don't shout because that would
Speaker 1: be disturbing to the patient. They use radio these days,
Speaker 1: we don't. We no longer have the talking tubes. Sadly
Speaker 1: we now use radio, so now we do break or
Speaker 1: breaker stuff. But yeah, it's a two way radio communication
Speaker 1: that you can use. Also that radio can uh usually
Speaker 1: be used to contact hospitals to let a hospital know
Speaker 1: the nature of the patient. Um, you know, whether there
Speaker 1: it's an injury or illness or whatever, and they can
Speaker 1: get more direction from the hospital that way, Like if
Speaker 1: they get a information from the hospital that the hospital
Speaker 1: is completely overwhelmed by some other terrible thing that's happened,
Speaker 1: then the ambulance can reroute and go to a different
Speaker 1: facility if necessary. So it's a really important tool. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's some ambulances that have computer systems on board that
Speaker 1: also do this, where they're tied into an overall network
Speaker 1: of computers to help keep track of not just what
Speaker 1: that ambulance is doing, but what other ambulances and hospitals
Speaker 1: are doing in order to give the best chance for
Speaker 1: that patient possible. Uh. So that's that's your communication. You also, uh,
Speaker 1: you want to know how long you might have to
Speaker 1: do this if you're if you're working in on an
Speaker 1: ambulance tea. Yeah, but I'm already pretty intimidated. Let Okay,
Speaker 1: So I watched a video where they said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: your average ambulance team works anywhere between eight and twenty
Speaker 1: four hours in a row. Man, I hope you don't
Speaker 1: break that hypothetical foot on our no joke. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was also talking about how there are you know, obviously
Speaker 1: different facilities for ambulances. Some hospitals have uh like essentially
Speaker 1: a holding area like a garage and uh and there
Speaker 1: you could get out of your ambulance and and relax
Speaker 1: as much as you can while on the job before
Speaker 1: you go on call. But other ambulance teams there their
Speaker 1: office is their car, their vehicle, they're inside the cab.
Speaker 1: For the guy who did the video, he did it
Speaker 1: for twelve hours at a time. That was how long
Speaker 1: his shift was. So for twelve hours when he wasn't
Speaker 1: actively helping a patient, he was sitting in the passenger
Speaker 1: side of an ambulance. I just everyday such immense respect
Speaker 1: for people who do that, and we know that this
Speaker 1: is not the end. Ambulance technology continues as we record
Speaker 1: this podcast. Yeah, I wish I could tell you that
Speaker 1: there's a ton of super cool, like groundbreaking tech, but
Speaker 1: a lot of this is again because we're talking about
Speaker 1: stuff that has to be proven to be helpful. It's
Speaker 1: a slow kind of a slow evolution because we need
Speaker 1: to make sure that they work. You don't want to
Speaker 1: employ a technology or technique simply because it's new without
Speaker 1: first knowing that's helpful. Right If we were to do otherwise,
Speaker 1: than we could potentially negatively impact patients, and that's the
Speaker 1: last thing you want to do. But some of the
Speaker 1: things that have been incorporated over the past few years
Speaker 1: are howler sirens, which are they complement the regular ambulance siren.
Speaker 1: They don't replace it, but this is a lower frequency
Speaker 1: sound that penetrates further and is supposed to help alert
Speaker 1: drivers on the road that an ambulance is approaching. To me,
Speaker 1: I listened to a few because I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've heard this or not, and I
Speaker 1: have heard it before, but to me, depending on the video,
Speaker 1: it sounds kind of like the old pac man eating
Speaker 1: pellets and won won't because it is it's essentially that
Speaker 1: that's same undulating frequency, but now it's a lower pitch
Speaker 1: than the other one, and again it's underneath the regular sirens,
Speaker 1: so you hear both at the same time. I thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've played a lot of pac Man. And also it
Speaker 1: is low enough frequency where you can actually feel those vibrations. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the idea being that even if you don't, if
Speaker 1: you don't actively register it as you know, hearing it,
Speaker 1: you feel it, and so that alerts you that there's
Speaker 1: an ambulance coming um And they say that you can
Speaker 1: feel the pressure from those sound waves if you're within
Speaker 1: two feet of the ambulance. Some of the ambulances around
Speaker 1: the world are being fitted with closed circuit television cameras
Speaker 1: internally and externally. The internal ones are meant partially as
Speaker 1: protection for ambulance crews because there's there's always the potential
Speaker 1: that you could be accused of malpractice, and they're meant
Speaker 1: to help maintain a level of accountability as well as
Speaker 1: protection for ambulance crews to say, well, we reviewed the
Speaker 1: the footage and they did exactly what they were supposed
Speaker 1: to do. That kind of thing. Yeah, that's gotta be huge.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a I'm an advocate of that kind of monitoring.
Speaker 1: As creepy as it might sound to some people. If
Speaker 1: we're talking about firefighters, police officers, e m. S. Anybody
Speaker 1: who's in a situation where they're dealing with the public,
Speaker 1: then you have to have some kind of way to
Speaker 1: establish a firm, inarguable record. Yeah, exactly. You either know
Speaker 1: who you're dealing with. You you either have to be
Speaker 1: able to say, this person who we put into a
Speaker 1: position of trust violated that trust and therefore we need
Speaker 1: to react appropriately, or you need to be able to say,
Speaker 1: the person who we put in this position did exactly
Speaker 1: what they were supposed to do, and this is what
Speaker 1: shows us. So another the external ones are meant in
Speaker 1: order to try and keep an eye on things that
Speaker 1: might be volatile situations, like let's say that there's a
Speaker 1: riot going on in the city. Like here in the
Speaker 1: United States, we occasionally have them for things as silly
Speaker 1: as a sports victory, and that may mean that someone
Speaker 1: ends up being injured in the process and you have
Speaker 1: to send them out. But you also want to be
Speaker 1: careful because people are not acting rationally. So yeah, attempted
Speaker 1: ambulance another one. Yeah, actually, and well, when you remember
Speaker 1: that there are lots of medications in that ambulance you
Speaker 1: could understand there are some some temptations for people to
Speaker 1: try and steal them. So these externally mounted cameras are
Speaker 1: meant to be both a deterrent and also just an
Speaker 1: aid to the people inside the ambulance to keep an
Speaker 1: eye on how things are going, to make sure that
Speaker 1: they stay safe, not just the patient but the ambulance
Speaker 1: u UM employees as well. Then you have also aboard,
Speaker 1: we're seeing air filtration systems being installed. This is not
Speaker 1: necessarily new again. In fact, most ambulances have climate control
Speaker 1: that's separate in the ambulance compartment from the cab, so
Speaker 1: you have two different climate control systems, and part of
Speaker 1: that is to make sure that any pathogens that are
Speaker 1: coming from the patient don't get passed on into the
Speaker 1: cab and uh UM. You know, in fact the person
Speaker 1: driving the vehicle as well, so it's to try and
Speaker 1: keep them safe. UM and some also have data recording
Speaker 1: systems that keep track of the vehicle's speed that's breaking
Speaker 1: its position. It's kind of like the black box on
Speaker 1: an airplane. An interesting fact for that, in the United States,
Speaker 1: the federal government has passed some regulations requiring something like
Speaker 1: a black box to be in most automobiles, so it's
Speaker 1: not just an ambulance that has this. And while a
Speaker 1: lot of people have these or welly and objections to it,
Speaker 1: I just want to point out that these things just
Speaker 1: records sort of flight data, sort of the metadata of
Speaker 1: your driving and h and a data recording system in
Speaker 1: an ambulance might be in communication with a network of
Speaker 1: some sort, but typically in your average consumer vehicle, they're
Speaker 1: not talking to anyone. No, it's recording simply within your
Speaker 1: vehicle itself, and ultimately that system might end up helping
Speaker 1: you as a driver. Let's say that you are driving
Speaker 1: a vehicle that suffers a mechanical failure, that's a manufacturing problem,
Speaker 1: and it's recorded in there so that anything that happens,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you have an accident and hopefully it's one
Speaker 1: that doesn't result in injury, but you have an accident
Speaker 1: that affects your car and it's due to a manufacturing problem,
Speaker 1: and that was recorded on that black box, is gonna
Speaker 1: be thankful for that, right as opposed to someone saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a careless driver. Yeah, And it's important for ambulance
Speaker 1: is to have that because they are statistically more likely
Speaker 1: to be involved in an accident. Sure, because they're they're
Speaker 1: entering areas that are already dangerous. They are also having
Speaker 1: to go through you know, intersections, they have to go
Speaker 1: through heavy traffic at times, they have to go through
Speaker 1: opposing traffic at times. This is obviously putting themselves at
Speaker 1: a higher risk for that sort of thing. I see,
Speaker 1: you've got an interesting little, um, little little blurb that
Speaker 1: we're wrapping up. We have time for it, okay, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: first off, thank you for for having me on. It's
Speaker 1: always a pleasure. Um. We we added some stuff folks
Speaker 1: under what we called fascinating but not totally necessary facts,
Speaker 1: and we both have one. Yes, uh mine is that
Speaker 1: as of October two thousand fourteen, Dubai is home to
Speaker 1: what they call the world's fastest ambulance. It's a refitted
Speaker 1: Lotus of Aora. It can travel up to a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty five miles per hour. And they have a
Speaker 1: couple of other things they're working on, which will say
Speaker 1: for later episodes. So a Lotus of Aora is a
Speaker 1: sports car. Yes. Do you know if they actually transport
Speaker 1: patients or is this just to get responders to a patient?
Speaker 1: I think it's because I was looking at this um
Speaker 1: and I think that there might be a way for
Speaker 1: them to strap somebody onto it, But you need to
Speaker 1: do a Google image. But I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: just to dispel it, I think it's it's more for
Speaker 1: them to show up on the scene and do treatment
Speaker 1: on the scene or donuts in the parking lot. This thing, look,
Speaker 1: I mean it's going fast standing still, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's what this thing is doing. And all the
Speaker 1: medical equipment is in that the quote unquote trunk of
Speaker 1: this VIHEO. If you've ever had a sports car written
Speaker 1: sports car, you know trunks are that's being generous. But
Speaker 1: but rear storage compartment is filled with medical equipment. Uh,
Speaker 1: and there's really I mean, if you have two responders,
Speaker 1: then there's no room for a page. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: don't see how that's my problem with. I don't see
Speaker 1: how you could attach somebody right, Yeah, unless you strap
Speaker 1: them to the top Christmas tree style, which I don't
Speaker 1: think I would recommend. Not a doctor either, But but
Speaker 1: but what's your what's your fascinating facts? So we do
Speaker 1: have one article on how stuff works that relates to
Speaker 1: ambulances that popped up and this one just amused me
Speaker 1: because it popped up and I was like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to include this because it's ridiculous. But it was
Speaker 1: one about really bizarre car races, and they talked about
Speaker 1: how on Spike TV's Car Apocalypse, which keep in mind
Speaker 1: this is for a like almost like a reality game
Speaker 1: show sort of thing, they had a crazy race that
Speaker 1: involved ambulance is called a chain race. Now, a chain
Speaker 1: race is when you have two vehicles, one towing the
Speaker 1: other with a chain, but you have drivers in both vehicles.
Speaker 1: So the driver in the front vehicles the one providing
Speaker 1: all the power and making turns and stuff. The driving
Speaker 1: the back vehicle is trying their best to maintain control
Speaker 1: over their unpowered but still very rapidly moving vehicle so
Speaker 1: that when they're going around turns and stuff, they're not
Speaker 1: slinging way off to the side. And the winner of
Speaker 1: the quote unquote races whichever vehicle still, you know, is
Speaker 1: able to complete it and still be towing their respective
Speaker 1: car behind them. So these were ambulances towing other cars,
Speaker 1: and they had two person teams, one person behind the
Speaker 1: wheel of the ambulance, one behind the wheel of the car.
Speaker 1: One It was kind of terrifying. I actually watched some
Speaker 1: some excerpts and and it was pretty crazy and was
Speaker 1: on the circular track, so it was all about spinning out,
Speaker 1: you know, like they would they would take a turn,
Speaker 1: and the person in the back, you know, they have
Speaker 1: very limited vision of what they could say that most
Speaker 1: of their vision is taken up by the back of
Speaker 1: an ambulance, and so they're they're trying to their best
Speaker 1: to kind of move with it, but if they swung
Speaker 1: out to wide, it would cause the whole thing to
Speaker 1: spin out. It's kind of spectacular. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the low down on ambulances. And uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think once we see more technology be proven, you know,
Speaker 1: have it's worth proven in the field, we'll see it
Speaker 1: make its way into ambulances. I don't again, I don't
Speaker 1: disagree with taking time to make sure that that's there.
Speaker 1: I I as someone who loves technology, my first instinct
Speaker 1: often is to adopt something first and then hope that
Speaker 1: the value plays out. But you don't want to do
Speaker 1: that when people's lives are at stake. I have no
Speaker 1: problem with it taking some time. I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: the frustration because if something could be saving lives you
Speaker 1: wanted to be out there, but you have to prove
Speaker 1: that that could is is real and ambulances being so varied,
Speaker 1: it's obvious to me and although I will admit this
Speaker 1: is an assumption, I think it's a fair one that
Speaker 1: ambulances also have wildly differing ranges of equipment with levels
Speaker 1: of sophistication. So there are you know, surely there are
Speaker 1: ambulances that have the insta burn graft kind of technology,
Speaker 1: crazy crazy stuff that that you know that could use
Speaker 1: some more time to be proven. Yeah, again, it's not
Speaker 1: one of those those cookie cutter type things where a
Speaker 1: standard model like you don't get the standard ambulance and
Speaker 1: standard ambulance response team that just ends up being you know,
Speaker 1: put out through all of the world. As as this
Speaker 1: is what we use from here on out. There's it's
Speaker 1: definitely a great answer. Yeah, maybe maybe one day we'll
Speaker 1: get to that standard. And uh, if we do, Lee,
Speaker 1: You're going to be one of the first people I
Speaker 1: write to about it because I thought this was an
Speaker 1: excellent suggestion. And thank you so much for having me
Speaker 1: on the show. Thank you for being on, Ben, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. So where can people find you? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: usually you you and I are hanging out on a
Speaker 1: show called What the Stuff and another show called brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: which is the old timey movie thing we referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: which I was really happy and I was really happy
Speaker 1: with that episode. I thought you did a great job,
Speaker 1: especially because you use that accent regularly. Anyway. Um, I
Speaker 1: also do a car stuff with Scott Benjamin, who is
Speaker 1: our guru of all things automotive, and I am on
Speaker 1: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know, which is a
Speaker 1: spooky show about secrets and critical thinking. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you that you came out to say you
Speaker 1: were in favor of the cameras and you also are
Speaker 1: a host of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well absolutely, I mean I that that's something for a
Speaker 1: different show, but I would love to have you on
Speaker 1: that show maybe one day about that. I would love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, maybe you've got an idea for an episode,
Speaker 1: you've got a comment about ambulances, or you just have
Speaker 1: other questions, please send them to me. My email address
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop me a line on social you could find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter and over on Tumblr and on Facebook, all
Speaker 1: with the handle text stuff h s W and We'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and bathands of other topics, does it have stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com