Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: a love of all things tech. It is time or
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published on
Speaker 1: December two, thousand fourteen. It is titled Taking a Ride
Speaker 1: in an Ambulance. Firefighting equipment has talked about ad nauseum
Speaker 1: in public forums, and fancy new medical equipment sometimes gets
Speaker 1: the spotlight. But what about the ambulance. I'll admit that
Speaker 1: until recently, they hadn't changed significantly since the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: when they were modified from being inspired from hers is
Speaker 1: the only vehicle designed for a passenger lying down at
Speaker 1: the time. However, now ambulances range from the massive bariatric
Speaker 1: trucks to the new Mercedes Sprinter that have mixed reviews
Speaker 1: to work in to the Volvo car based ambul lenses
Speaker 1: Europe is experimenting with. It has taken nearly half a century,
Speaker 1: but the humble ambulance is beginning to see some innovations,
Speaker 1: including the introduction of safety features. Watch ambulance crash tests
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Efficiency and tech to save lives. I'm certainly biased,
Speaker 1: being a volunteer medic and having many paramedic friends, but
Speaker 1: maybe you, Scott or Ben and the Tech Stuff audience
Speaker 1: could find it an interesting topic to dive into. Take
Speaker 1: Care Lee, Yeah, now you know I recognize Lee's name,
Speaker 1: and I think this is such a fantastic suggestion. Uh,
Speaker 1: Scott and I have been doing car stuff for quite
Speaker 1: a while. Um, not quite as long as Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: which is one of the original three podcast we ever
Speaker 1: started making. But we have this moment which I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've encountered to, Jonathan, where you're looking back over a
Speaker 1: list of all the stuff you've done and you go, way,
Speaker 1: we haven't done this when really, heck, I went to
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com typed an ambulance. Can't believe
Speaker 1: we don't have how ambulances were right? Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: now we are verging on the very first official explanation
Speaker 1: of how ambulances work ever. Ever, not not just for
Speaker 1: how stuff works. I'm saying like no one has taken
Speaker 1: the time to actually explain this until this moment, right,
Speaker 1: which might be hyperbole. 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 it's rule number one.
Speaker 1: That's rule number one. Of course, Now we looked into, um,
Speaker 1: we looked into some surprising 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 on the Latin word ambulaire
Speaker 1: or ambulare if you prefer. I don't speak 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. They were more about moving them away from
Speaker 1: the healthy people by force, so kind of like a
Speaker 1: prison bus for sick people. Now that there were different kinds, right,
Speaker 1: You had you had the military type, which was all
Speaker 1: about retrieving injured soldiers and moving them out of the
Speaker 1: field of battle. But then you also had the type
Speaker 1: that were in more populated like urban areas, some of
Speaker 1: the growing cities, and that was more about this person
Speaker 1: over year doesn't seem to be acting properly. Let's get
Speaker 1: 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 something. Yeah, you 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 could 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 are 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. I'm gonna that's That's an excellent guest,
Speaker 1: and you are correct, sir, Thank you. I am a
Speaker 1: bit of an armchair guess. Or. One thing that is
Speaker 1: interesting about this before we move on, however, with the
Speaker 1: Knights of St. John, is that I believe and me
Speaker 1: being correct here, but I believe this was one of
Speaker 1: the first organizations, at least in the West, that would
Speaker 1: care for people regardless of which side. That's that's correct.
Speaker 1: They would. They would retrieve soldiers wounded from any side
Speaker 1: of a battle and treat them. Uh. They're the Maltese
Speaker 1: Cross also eventually evolved into the Red Cross. UH. Also
Speaker 1: just random trivia here. One of my distant relatives used
Speaker 1: to rule Malta. So what yeah, wait, when are you serious?
Speaker 1: I am absolutely serious? Okay is this um? Could you
Speaker 1: give me some time and space context? Were we talking
Speaker 1: like nineteen seventies, early twentieth century night, early thirty I
Speaker 1: think thirty seven maybe? Uh? Yeah, his his um. His
Speaker 1: governing of Malta was not without political issues, political and
Speaker 1: religious issues. That's all I can really say about that
Speaker 1: without turning this podcast into something completely okay, But for
Speaker 1: the record, I think people probably want to hear that story.
Speaker 1: I know I do, so we can talk about it
Speaker 1: off the air. Since it doesn't sound like the controversy
Speaker 1: was ambulance related, it wasn't. It wasn't. So the Spanish, now,
Speaker 1: moving on from from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, they
Speaker 1: began to use wagons to transport people in need of
Speaker 1: emergency medical care back in fourteen seven, that's during the
Speaker 1: whole like we're getting into Ferdinand and Isabella time. They
Speaker 1: also introduced field hospitals, which were called ambulancia's, So that
Speaker 1: was the that referred to the field hospital, not the wagon. Now,
Speaker 1: these field hospitals were tents that had medical and surgical
Speaker 1: supplies in them, but they were very rarely used. It
Speaker 1: was hard to actually get soldiers to where they needed
Speaker 1: to be. These wagons were not terribly maneuverable. And it
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be until the seventeen hundreds, three years later,
Speaker 1: that you would actually see wounded soldiers receiving treatment and
Speaker 1: field hospitals or be carried away by an emergency vehicle
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. And that still wasn't perfect, right,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people died on the way to
Speaker 1: or from Oh yeah, no, if you look at if
Speaker 1: you look at casualty records, uh, one of the many
Speaker 1: reasons why researching this was getting to me today. But
Speaker 1: if you look at casualty records, it's a pretty grim story.
Speaker 1: So you see the number of people who were outright
Speaker 1: killed and and you see the number of people who
Speaker 1: were retrieved by the folks manning the ambulance as the
Speaker 1: wagons um, and you hear about their casualty rates, and
Speaker 1: they were extreme. I mean it was it was not
Speaker 1: good news if you were wounded in battle. Uh. For
Speaker 1: a very very long time, the prevailing wisdom was let
Speaker 1: them let them die, right, I mean it really was. Yeah,
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, especially when we consider a
Speaker 1: very sad fact which I'm sure you ran across as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, the people who were picked for the
Speaker 1: medical retrieval teams were not the crack soldiers. They weren't
Speaker 1: the smartest, they weren't the fastest. They were considered to
Speaker 1: be the ones who are least likely to actually kill
Speaker 1: the enemy. Therefore, let's go ahead and put them in
Speaker 1: charge of this wagon for all the soldiers who have
Speaker 1: been wounded, right, they were considered the grade B fighters. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it was. They were not picked for their ability
Speaker 1: to actually retrieve people. They were picked because they were
Speaker 1: least likely to be useful on the front lines. Um.
Speaker 1: And speaking of front lines, that was part of the problem.
Speaker 1: Like these wagons were actually usually located the back of
Speaker 1: the army, and they were very heavy, they're very cumbersome,
Speaker 1: so it took so much time and effort to maneuver
Speaker 1: them that offense soldiers were dying on the battlefield before
Speaker 1: they'd ever have a chance to be rescued, let alone
Speaker 1: incur any problems along the way. So this was a
Speaker 1: big issue until a French surgeon named Dominique Jean Larry
Speaker 1: designed a lightweight, two wheeled wagon to create a faster
Speaker 1: response vehicle. And they were called flying ambulances. And it's
Speaker 1: not because they could fly through the air, because they couldn't. Uh. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to cut you off there, Ben, But
Speaker 1: they were often stationed with the flying artillery, which also
Speaker 1: could not fly. Oh yeah, sorry, this is just a
Speaker 1: bummer across the board. Well, they're called flying artillery because
Speaker 1: they were very light artillery that would be towed by
Speaker 1: horses to their location, so they could they could relocate
Speaker 1: relatively quickly, as opposed to field artillery, which was so
Speaker 1: heavy and cumbersome that you planted it and you didn't
Speaker 1: move it, you know, until the battle is over. It's
Speaker 1: staying right there. So uh, they would be stationed with
Speaker 1: the flying artillery. So these are both horse cavalry type units.
Speaker 1: They normally be cavalry support and that changes fundamentally changes
Speaker 1: somebody's odds of living or surviving a war wound. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a huge improvement. Some people were suggesting that
Speaker 1: it was an improvement as much as that that that
Speaker 1: you know, you had a rate of casualty that was
Speaker 1: being reduced to ten because of this. Now that was
Speaker 1: someone who was writing in support of funding more of
Speaker 1: these kind of wagons. So I doubt that it was
Speaker 1: based on any empirical research. More on, more on the
Speaker 1: idea of I think how many lives we could save,
Speaker 1: which still is a noble effort, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have to fudge a few numbers. But some hospitals at
Speaker 1: this time, such as the Staffordshire General Infirmary, started to
Speaker 1: employ their own ambulances. So now we start seeing ambulances
Speaker 1: in the civilian life, not just in in warfare. And
Speaker 1: these were still wagons pulled by horses. The Staffordshire's wagon
Speaker 1: was described as quote a carriage hung upon strings to
Speaker 1: be drawn by one or more horses for the conveyance
Speaker 1: of the sick or maimed end quote. And by the
Speaker 1: close of the eighteenth century, organized ambulance service was starting
Speaker 1: to grow in Europe Europe Europe, yes, the United States
Speaker 1: was not so quick to adopt this. Ambulance service was
Speaker 1: practically absent during the beginning of the American Civil war,
Speaker 1: which if you guys aren't familiar, Uh, a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners are from outside the US. The American Civil
Speaker 1: War began in eighteen sixty by really eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: And uh, you don't have any mention of ambulances in
Speaker 1: those early in those early accounts, right yeah. And this
Speaker 1: was um one of the bloodiest battles, right that people
Speaker 1: remember in the United States. And uh, some of the
Speaker 1: casualties in one of the battles, the Battle bull Run.
Speaker 1: We're just saying this for an example, instead of having
Speaker 1: an ambulance anywhere near, they walked twenty seven miles after
Speaker 1: they were wounded to get some sort of treatment if
Speaker 1: they survived. That's part of why there was such a
Speaker 1: horrific attrition rate in this or casualty rate rather in
Speaker 1: this um in this conflict. Oh absolutely yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: not only do you have Americans versus Americans, So I mean,
Speaker 1: no matter what the casualty is, an American, here's that.
Speaker 1: But then you also had just these the you had
Speaker 1: no preparedness, you had no ability to to help the people,
Speaker 1: the soldiers who had fallen. And so again it was
Speaker 1: one of those situations where if you fell in battle
Speaker 1: if you were wounded, you know, people off would just
Speaker 1: treat you as if you had died. Um. It was
Speaker 1: only after the appointment of doctor Jonathan Letterman to the
Speaker 1: post of Surgeon General of the Army of the Potomac
Speaker 1: Medical Department. And this is where we mentioned the post
Speaker 1: of surgeon general. The United States had not been invented yet.
Speaker 1: There had there were surgeon generals in the armed forces,
Speaker 1: and this is not the surgeon General of the Army
Speaker 1: overall as a different, different post. But he uh organized
Speaker 1: soldiers into response teams to carry wounded to a site
Speaker 1: where they then could be transported to field hospitals or
Speaker 1: even further on into general hospitals. In fact, they had
Speaker 1: sort of a a primary response site where the anything
Speaker 1: immediate would be attended to. The soldiers would then be
Speaker 1: carried off to a field hospital. At the field hospital,
Speaker 1: they would then determine whether or not to treat the
Speaker 1: soldier there or to transport him further to the general hospital.
Speaker 1: So it was a much more kind of chain of
Speaker 1: command organized approach. Then William A. Hammond who became surgeon
Speaker 1: General of the U. S. Army in the eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: So the overall Army standardized ambulance response and also demanded
Speaker 1: that hospitals be clean establishments, which was before back the
Speaker 1: we knew about bacteria. So his theory was that the
Speaker 1: clean establishments would save more lives, though he didn't have,
Speaker 1: you know, like a scientific reason to point to, because
Speaker 1: we hadn't discovered bacteria yet. But it turns out he
Speaker 1: was right and um and so his his approach ended
Speaker 1: up saving a lot of lives. He also demanded that
Speaker 1: there'd be one ambulance for every one fifty soldiers serving
Speaker 1: in the U. S. Army, and he got it, which
Speaker 1: is pretty hardcore if you think about it back then,
Speaker 1: because if we're talking about these response teams, right then
Speaker 1: we're talking about a cost benefit analysis of things that
Speaker 1: are pretty expensive and war, which is training time and cavalry.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, we're pretty persuasive. You're talking about not
Speaker 1: just money, but actual people and animals resources that could
Speaker 1: be dedicated to inflicting casualties upon the animally enemy. You'll
Speaker 1: notice that I haven't really talked about the Confederates for
Speaker 1: a reason for that, they just they were not nearly
Speaker 1: as as organized as the as the Union was during
Speaker 1: the Civil War when it came to things like treating soldiers.
Speaker 1: Uh just watched the documentary film Gone with the Wind.
Speaker 1: Uh don't. I mean, you can watch it. It's not
Speaker 1: a documentary obviously. So in eighteen sixty four, Congress passes
Speaker 1: the Ambulance Core Act, which established a standardized system of
Speaker 1: ambulances in the United States. Now, these ambulances had distinct
Speaker 1: labels to designate them as such, and then the Geneva
Speaker 1: Convention of eighteen sixty four went further and adopted the
Speaker 1: Red Cross as the international symbol for emergency medical responders,
Speaker 1: which were to be treated as neutral parties. One thing
Speaker 1: that is just fantastic about this is that this is
Speaker 1: um and maybe it's a bit high, probably on my part,
Speaker 1: ch Onathan, but this is one of the biggest steps
Speaker 1: I think for the human species at large. We actually
Speaker 1: took the idea of the Knights of St. John, which
Speaker 1: which wasn't I mean, let's be honest, if it's during
Speaker 1: the Crusades, they weren't always saving everybody. Sure, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of mothering going on, I'm sure, but the Red
Speaker 1: Cross as this international, neutral, benevolent force that somehow it
Speaker 1: must have been a great day In eighteen sixty four
Speaker 1: when they all agreed to let that slide. That's amazing
Speaker 1: to me. I just wanted to stop and say, you know,
Speaker 1: good for us people. Gosh, yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: also a little one of those weird things to think
Speaker 1: about the idea of we all agree that these people
Speaker 1: are not okay to shoot at, but these other people
Speaker 1: are totally okay to shoot at. This. This is where
Speaker 1: my pacifism comes into right, where I'm just like, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't get okay whatever, so um at any rate,
Speaker 1: it is it is a great testament that we were
Speaker 1: able to come to this agreement and by and large
Speaker 1: people follow it because you know, it's it's it applies
Speaker 1: to everyone. It's not something where only that side gets
Speaker 1: to have the benefit of medical treatment. It's it's this
Speaker 1: this international UH initiative. So in eighteen sixty five, the
Speaker 1: Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati is the first one in the
Speaker 1: United States to have a hospital based ambulance service. Bellevue
Speaker 1: Hospital would follow in eighteen sixty nine. Oh fun fact,
Speaker 1: this is something car stuff listeners will enjoy. Usually we
Speaker 1: do a an inflation calculator that always does but I'll
Speaker 1: at lee you probably recognize this, but I'll fill in
Speaker 1: since UH Scott is occupied at the moment. So that
Speaker 1: UH ambulance driver in eighteen sixty five there in Cincinnati
Speaker 1: would make about three hundred and sixty dollars a year
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, eighteen sixty five dollars in two
Speaker 1: in fourteen, Jonathan, Uh, this is more than you would think,
Speaker 1: but still not that much. It's about five thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred thirty dollars a year a year. Wow, yeah, all year.
Speaker 1: I got a cut back on my Xbox consumption. And
Speaker 1: 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 six.
Speaker 1: And now we're finally getting to automotives. Automotives, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the we get the first motorized ambulance in Chicago. It
Speaker 1: was actually from why I understand, five hundred different business
Speaker 1: men over in Chicago, UH donated money so that this
Speaker 1: ambulance could become a reality. And so it was a
Speaker 1: motorized ambulance that was donated to Michael Reese Hospital and
Speaker 1: its top speed was a blistering sixteen miles per hour,
Speaker 1: which still when you think about it, when you have
Speaker 1: a reliable sixteen miles per hour and it's a device
Speaker 1: that doesn't get tired. It can run out of juice,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't get exhausted, Um, that's a big deal. Uh.
Speaker 1: The now, the next year, New York's St. Vincent Hospital
Speaker 1: would get its own motorized ambulance. It's horseless carriage ambulance.
Speaker 1: And these were interesting. They were not gasoline powered vehicles.
Speaker 1: These were and and then you know this because you've
Speaker 1: covered car stuffer so long. They were electric vehicles. The
Speaker 1: electric vehicle predates the internal combustion engine. Yes, and that
Speaker 1: story is actually so interesting that we're going to have
Speaker 1: to table it for another episode because you and I
Speaker 1: could go off for twenty minutes about that. But that
Speaker 1: is something that people need to know. And I know
Speaker 1: it sounds hard to believe, but Jonathan, you are spot on.
Speaker 1: The first cars were electric. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't think
Speaker 1: of it now because whenever you see any sort of
Speaker 1: advertisement for an electric vehicle, it's treating it like it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a brand new idea. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: is actually older than the gasoline powered cars where we've
Speaker 1: been relying on for a century at any rate. Uh,
Speaker 1: these electrical engine ambulances, they had a maximum travel distance
Speaker 1: of between twenty to thirty miles, which is pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You're talking about a city, right, You're not talking about
Speaker 1: driving from one city to the next. You're talking about
Speaker 1: an ambulance that would go out from a hospital to
Speaker 1: a specific location within a city, pick up somebody and
Speaker 1: bring it back. So bringing him or her back, and
Speaker 1: the doctor in the back of the ambulance, because they
Speaker 1: actually would allow a medical practitioner to go along, could
Speaker 1: communicate with the driver in the front through a speaking tube. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the I love of that note you have
Speaker 1: about the speaking tube. I wish we still had those cars.
Speaker 1: That sounds so much more fun than in intercom. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where 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. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a good one. Um. So here we are. We're approaching
Speaker 1: the twenty century. Yeah, we're in the twentieth century. We're
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century. That's right, we're early on in it.
Speaker 1: Because because New York's got there's nineteen hundred. I guess
Speaker 1: if you want to be technical, nineteen o one is
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century, you're not gonna be that guy. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: early in the twentieth century, Major Palace of the Canadian
Speaker 1: Army introduced the first gasoline powered ambulances. Got it first,
Speaker 1: and everyone went my word or they went a yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those. Uh. At any rate, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Canada gets pretty cold. And we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about fuel types when we get further into the discussion.
Speaker 1: So using gasolene made some sense. The first mass produced
Speaker 1: ambulance came from a company that sold herses. Just like
Speaker 1: Lee was mentioning, horses, were vehicles that, you know, we're
Speaker 1: designed to have a person laid out in the back,
Speaker 1: and so a patient who's suffering from some sort of
Speaker 1: injury or illness may feel more comfortable down than sitting up.
Speaker 1: And so the this company was called James Cunningham's Son
Speaker 1: and Company, and there they had a really interesting design.
Speaker 1: In fact, they were very h advanced in automobile technology
Speaker 1: compared to their There the other cars that were on
Speaker 1: the road at the time. Again, early twenteth century and
Speaker 1: you end up getting this, uh, this machine that has
Speaker 1: a cot in the back of it, and it had
Speaker 1: its own suspension. So the cot had its suspension independent
Speaker 1: of the vehicle, which allowed the passenger the patient to
Speaker 1: remain more comfortable. They didn't feel all the bumps that
Speaker 1: the ambulance is driving over. That can also prevent further
Speaker 1: injury too, in the case of you know, a compound
Speaker 1: break or yeah. Yeah, it's very important in that sense.
Speaker 1: The the ambulance itself also had pneumatic tires, which was
Speaker 1: unusual at the time. Most vehicles had solid tires. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until Eater that pneumatic tires became kind of standard,
Speaker 1: and these obviously also allowed for a much smoother, gentler
Speaker 1: ride than a solid rubber tire. Can you imagine what
Speaker 1: that must have felt like. I had to be pretty rough.
Speaker 1: They didn't have a siren my favorite ambulance did I say? 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. It's Jonathan from one.
Speaker 1: There's no emergency here. We're just gonna take a break
Speaker 1: from writing in an ambulance and we'll be right back
Speaker 1: going on to the earlier point that you made, which
Speaker 1: which I think is so profound and cannot be over emphasized.
Speaker 1: So many of the innovations in both performance and safety
Speaker 1: into automobiles today come from two places, racing or war.
Speaker 1: And it's weird when you think about it, because war
Speaker 1: still has uh I would almost seeing even bigger parts
Speaker 1: of 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 driver's 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 serve as ambulances, but there
Speaker 1: were still a lot of horse drawn ambulances at the
Speaker 1: same time. This is a moment of transition when the
Speaker 1: automobile hasn't had universal acceptance or it's not universally available,
Speaker 1: and early versions of ambulances were just converted buses or
Speaker 1: Parisian taxis. They took taxis out of Paris and turned
Speaker 1: them into ambulances. So when the United States entered the war,
Speaker 1: the Americans brought along the model t Ford to serve
Speaker 1: as ambulances. These were actually modified model T Fords. They
Speaker 1: were had had a wider carriage to be able to
Speaker 1: accept a person laying down um and they could travel
Speaker 1: speeds up to forty and they could go across much
Speaker 1: more rough terrain than your average wagon could. And there
Speaker 1: was 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 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 horse would you know, trod
Speaker 1: along to wherever it was supposed to go. I assumed
Speaker 1: there was also a rider that would go to the
Speaker 1: nearest hospital and it would tow the balloon to the
Speaker 1: hospital and us you would be able to bring the
Speaker 1: patient back down to earth if they were not shot
Speaker 1: from the sky. I mean, it's an innovative idea, yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know it's not it's not perfect. Is
Speaker 1: jumping off point right right? Yeah? Or a falling down? Okay?
Speaker 1: So post World War two, all right, So World War
Speaker 1: two obviously more developments in the ambulance. By then we
Speaker 1: had really switched to automobiles. But post World War Two
Speaker 1: you also saw urban growth exploding, and it meant that
Speaker 1: we need more ambulance services. So you have a lot
Speaker 1: more areas, like you know, there were cities like London
Speaker 1: in Paris that have been huge for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: But in general, we started to see more of a
Speaker 1: move from agriculture to urban environments. This is the same
Speaker 1: time as we're starting to see like some some really
Speaker 1: big developments in industry that's just pushing people towards that.
Speaker 1: And so it meant that we had a larger need
Speaker 1: for ambulance services in cities, and that need was starting
Speaker 1: to be met by various approaches. Again, many of these
Speaker 1: ambulances were converted horses, but these didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of room for an attendant. You couldn't really have a
Speaker 1: medical professional in the back who could easily attend to
Speaker 1: any person. You essentially, we're just moving the injured person
Speaker 1: to a hospital. So the standard thinking was that treatment
Speaker 1: would begin once he got to the hospital, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And now, of course, if you have ever been in
Speaker 1: an ambulance, seen one, or just even watch TV, you
Speaker 1: know the treatment begins the moment e M S arrives.
Speaker 1: But up until this point, there wasn't really an e
Speaker 1: M S thing. Yeah, yeah, this was again it was
Speaker 1: one of those ideas where the people who were best
Speaker 1: qualified to treat the patient, we're all at the hospital
Speaker 1: or or urgent care center or whatever, something along those lines,
Speaker 1: and the idea was you had to get the patient
Speaker 1: to that person. There wasn't so much of an eye
Speaker 1: idea of having medically trained people go out to see
Speaker 1: the patient and attend to the patient while they are
Speaker 1: being transported back to a hospital or other facility. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen fifties that we really see
Speaker 1: that birth of the emergency medical services movement. And this
Speaker 1: is where we would see people who were treating trained
Speaker 1: in medical emergency UH techniques to try and go out
Speaker 1: and treat people and give them a better chance of recovery.
Speaker 1: Or survival, even depending on the nature of the illness
Speaker 1: or injury. Yeah, and we know that this eventually leads
Speaker 1: to um leads to more improvements in the typical ambulance
Speaker 1: because also the as strange as this sounds, uh, the
Speaker 1: ambulances that were used before this time didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: medical equipment on board. R Yeah. It was essentially a
Speaker 1: moving bed. Yeah, I mean, that's really what it got
Speaker 1: boils down to, is that, uh, you know again, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the ambulances were just meant to allow
Speaker 1: people to take a wounded or sick person to the hospital,
Speaker 1: that's it. But it changed once we started getting medical
Speaker 1: professionals on board. Yeah. And in nineteen sixty five there
Speaker 1: was the Accidental Death and Disability Paper, which I think
Speaker 1: was actually published in sixty six, written in sixty five,
Speaker 1: publish in sixty six, and it called for a new
Speaker 1: type of ambulance to provide space for the not just
Speaker 1: the patient, but also in attendant end equipment. The idea
Speaker 1: here being we can treat this person as soon as
Speaker 1: we're able to make contact with them. As soon as
Speaker 1: we get to where they are, we treatment can begin
Speaker 1: at that moment. There's no need to put it off
Speaker 1: until they are at the hospital that too many lives
Speaker 1: are being lost, too many or even if the life
Speaker 1: isn't lost, the quality of life declines sharply if they
Speaker 1: aren't able to receive help as early as possible. So
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy three e M S Systems Act required
Speaker 1: that communities receiving federal funds for their programs had to
Speaker 1: have ambulances that met federal specifications, which included things like
Speaker 1: they're you know, crash test rating or having um A
Speaker 1: BS or you know other elements as we've been down to,
Speaker 1: like the frequency of maintenance. Y. Yeah, you had to
Speaker 1: be able to meet these qualifications in order for you
Speaker 1: to receive that funding. Otherwise you could have the funding
Speaker 1: cut off. There are three types of chassiss that were
Speaker 1: established by this and those three types are still the
Speaker 1: types we we refer to today. So you've got type one,
Speaker 1: which uses a small truck body with a modular component
Speaker 1: in the back. Type two, which is I think the
Speaker 1: most prevalent type here in the United States at least,
Speaker 1: it has a van body with a raised roof, and
Speaker 1: Type three has a van chassis but with a modular
Speaker 1: component in the back and in the United States, these
Speaker 1: will all have something called the Star of life. If
Speaker 1: we've all seen this, it's a blue uh six point
Speaker 1: in star uh with the with the rod in the
Speaker 1: middle right and then the snake on it, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole nine uh. This was originally designed by the
Speaker 1: U S National Traffic Safety Administration, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a It's weird because it's it's trademarked by them,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of like a mark of authenticity for E. M.
Speaker 1: S vehicles and for ambulances, um or and even you know,
Speaker 1: of course, you see a paramedic, they will usually have
Speaker 1: that somewhere on their on their body. And this you'll
Speaker 1: see on our notes here. I had this as we
Speaker 1: could skip this, but it's interesting. Let's keep it okay, alright, cool.
Speaker 1: The next time you look at one of these six
Speaker 1: point in stars on the side of an ambulance or
Speaker 1: a paramedic, it looks almost like an asterisk. It pretty
Speaker 1: It looks way more like an asterisk than it does
Speaker 1: like a star, you know, because it has it has
Speaker 1: flat ends, so it's more like three bars laid over
Speaker 1: one another. Each of these project points stands for one
Speaker 1: of the things that emergency services do. There's detection, reporting,
Speaker 1: response on seen care, care and transit and then transfer
Speaker 1: to definitive care. And to me, that's interesting because I
Speaker 1: always wonder about the logic behind a logo, you know,
Speaker 1: um where where, because everybody who makes one of these
Speaker 1: has a story. Sure like the Red Cross, right the
Speaker 1: right to st John, you don't. You don't. Typically when
Speaker 1: you're making a logo, you don't want it to You
Speaker 1: wanted to have some sort of significance or whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're doing right, you want you wanted to tell
Speaker 1: its own story so that not only do people recognize
Speaker 1: it as your logo, but they at least get that
Speaker 1: there's some sort of significance to it. I always I
Speaker 1: feel so dumb because Jonathan, I always assumed that they
Speaker 1: just stuck a logo on there because they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's let people know this is an ambulance. Well,
Speaker 1: to be fair, Ben, that could be the answer. And
Speaker 1: it could be that these six points were retro cond
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, totally just you know, reckon the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was really interesting. It also makes
Speaker 1: me think that if if you're hurt and a van
Speaker 1: pulls up and it doesn't have this mark on it,
Speaker 1: don't get into the van. Yeah, that's the first thing
Speaker 1: that that occurred to me when you were talking about this. No,
Speaker 1: we we came the three types right that they have
Speaker 1: their but uh, ambulances, as we established at the top,
Speaker 1: don't have to necessarily be a car automobile. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: they can be, and in fact, i'd say the vast
Speaker 1: majority of them are. But they can also be boats
Speaker 1: or helicopters, fixed wing aircraft or even other vehicles. And
Speaker 1: emergency ambulances are you know, the ones that we think
Speaker 1: of that's the most common type, the emergency ambulances, the
Speaker 1: type that has a medical professional in it um at
Speaker 1: least one usually too, uh, and that can treat you
Speaker 1: on the way to a medical facility like hospital. But
Speaker 1: there 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 like what what car company
Speaker 1: makes them? And there's no single answer for that. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are lots of different car companies that make the
Speaker 1: chassiss that end up being used as ambulances. And then
Speaker 1: you have other manufacturers that are not the big car
Speaker 1: companies that make the various compartments like the actual you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the modular components in some cases or in other cases,
Speaker 1: they get they get possession of the chassis that was
Speaker 1: manufactured by the first company, and then they put in
Speaker 1: all the stuff like the fittings, the medical equipment, all
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that actually makes it an ambulance.
Speaker 1: The tech that will will talk about in just a bit.
Speaker 1: And then they're also the second manufacturer is typically the
Speaker 1: one who has to build to that federal code. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they build out that whole interior. They have to meet
Speaker 1: the code, and the chassis obviously has to meet the
Speaker 1: requirements of things like the crash tests, but the rest
Speaker 1: of it also has to meet those same requirements. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you wouldn't say, you know, because you
Speaker 1: think of you 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 used,
Speaker 1: um in warmer climates, but in cold climates, diesel engines
Speaker 1: take time to warm up to actually work. Anyone who's
Speaker 1: operated diesel vehicle up in the Great White North knows
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, So they often will use gasoline
Speaker 1: powered vehicles instead. Uh, you might find gasoline powered vehicles
Speaker 1: and warmer climates to It kind of just depends upon
Speaker 1: 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: of out ambulances, the more we learned that while they
Speaker 1: all have the same aim for the most part, they
Speaker 1: have 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 a 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 refuse to acknowledge each other's existence.
Speaker 1: I mean, it happens. It happens. We spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time hanging out their ups and down. 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, appeared 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 and 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 fact, 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 question for you at the end of this
Speaker 1: regarding regarding this very point, but we'll we'll hold it there. UM.
Speaker 1: I think you already pointed out that when New York
Speaker 1: launched this uh, this motorized ambulance or excuse me, not
Speaker 1: motorized their first ambulance system, uh, that horse drawn cart
Speaker 1: going at its bustle blistering four miles per hour. And
Speaker 1: he did some lights to let everybody know. Um. There
Speaker 1: were also not any federal standards for light based ambulance
Speaker 1: alerts for a very long time. So it's all of
Speaker 1: this customization and variation. Um. You know, if you've ever
Speaker 1: heard a siren, you hear that it always has at
Speaker 1: least two tones usually and and it oscillates between the
Speaker 1: two right. And you know why that is too, because
Speaker 1: the sound there makes it easier to hear if it's
Speaker 1: coming toward you it's going away. Yeah, that you've got
Speaker 1: the Doppler effect where if it's coming towards you, it's
Speaker 1: a higher pitch, and as it's going away it's a
Speaker 1: lower pitch. But either way you identify that as the
Speaker 1: sound of an emergency vehicle. Yes. And also this this variation, though,
Speaker 1: means that ambulances would have different sounds or different colors
Speaker 1: of light for such a long time, such a long
Speaker 1: time in fact, and this irritates the heck out of
Speaker 1: me that it is still a patchwork at least in
Speaker 1: the United States h state by state right. For instance,
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, you can only use blue lights on a
Speaker 1: vehicle if it's a snowplow or road maintenance UH set up.
Speaker 1: But in Illinois h all the medical or fire emergency
Speaker 1: vehicles have to use blue UH. So these things go
Speaker 1: state by state, and the rules for one ambulance may
Speaker 1: not apply in the next state over. So if I
Speaker 1: see flashing lights as I go state by state, I
Speaker 1: I won't 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 completely and it's a snowplow, which I would already
Speaker 1: be confused because we don't have those here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: On we have three, Yeah, we do have three. Three
Speaker 1: do we buy a new one yet? I think we
Speaker 1: really just have to. I think we really do only
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: emergency right, to have some kind of clason that just
Speaker 1: makes people's teeth vibrate and feel if the jelly in
Speaker 1: your eyes starts to solidify, then that's clearly not what
Speaker 1: you wanted in your emergency response vehicle. And so until
Speaker 1: there's more uh, until there's a larger body of research
Speaker 1: behind this, people are very very hesitant to try to
Speaker 1: translate good intentions into policy. Um. And you know there
Speaker 1: are researchers who are working at this, like Michael Flanagan
Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan but are at their Transportation
Speaker 1: Research Institute. Excuse me, Dr Flanagan. And uh, what we're
Speaker 1: hoping for is that and some point, the sooner the better,
Speaker 1: there will be some kind of uniform code. But also
Speaker 1: at this point kind of roped into it because so
Speaker 1: many states and so many private and publicly owned ambulance
Speaker 1: companies have already invested so much money in They have
Speaker 1: a they have a fleet of vehicles that are already
Speaker 1: designed as you would have to retrofit all these vehicles.
Speaker 1: Not that that wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavor, but that
Speaker 1: costs money. And you know that when you get down
Speaker 1: to it, when we talk about businesses that provide ambulance service,
Speaker 1: it's a business. We'll get into that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about what happens when
Speaker 1: someone does call for an ambulance, Like what's the process?
Speaker 1: And we're gonna go through the whole nine one one
Speaker 1: route because that's a very very common one here. Um,
Speaker 1: If it's If you're in the UK, it's O one one.
Speaker 1: Remember that episode the I T crowd Um, but nine
Speaker 1: one one, So if you were to dial nine one
Speaker 1: one or I believe in the UK. The way it
Speaker 1: works is operators will dispatch an ambulance according to zones.
Speaker 1: So wherever 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 call, 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 us I'm not well versed
Speaker 1: in this, so I s 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 hundred. 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 mt s
Speaker 1: have to have to be to demonstrate life saving skills
Speaker 1: including CPR, administering oxygen, administering glucose for diabetics. Uh. They
Speaker 1: are not, though in general, at least allowed to provide
Speaker 1: 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. We're gonna take another quick break,
Speaker 1: but we will be back in just a moment. So
Speaker 1: what do paramedics do that? So they're advanced emergency medical
Speaker 1: care providers. They build on those e m T skills
Speaker 1: with even more skills and more tasks that they can do,
Speaker 1: such as administering medicine or star an IV line in
Speaker 1: the back of an ambulance. So they're allowed to use needles.
Speaker 1: They are trained in that, they're allowed to administer medication
Speaker 1: to a patient. Usually the medications We'll talk about all
Speaker 1: the equipment on there, but I might as well mention
Speaker 1: it here. Medications that are usually included in an ambulance
Speaker 1: are the ones needed for those emergency responses. It's the
Speaker 1: most common type of medications that are needed for that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Epinephrin would be a big one, for example.
Speaker 1: Um but uh, and you know you have to be
Speaker 1: really careful obviously, because sometimes those medications include things like narcotics.
Speaker 1: So uh, ambulance teams are are responsible for the inventory
Speaker 1: inside their vehicles, which means that if you find out
Speaker 1: that you have a shortage of narcotics in your vehicle,
Speaker 1: you have some serious explaining to do. I mean, they
Speaker 1: have a huge amount of accountability in that department. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely understandably. So how speaking of accountability, how long does
Speaker 1: it take them to respond to a call? Okay, well
Speaker 1: that's that's a great question. Again at various region by region,
Speaker 1: I thought I would pick one of the most famously
Speaker 1: congested areas in the United States, the city known for
Speaker 1: the worst traffic in the US, Los Angeles. Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I believe takes number one. If if not, it's at
Speaker 1: least culturally referred to as the worst traffic in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Atlanta is pretty bad, but l A is worse. Uh
Speaker 1: So Los Angeles an ambulance is supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to get to a patient within eight minutes fifty nine
Speaker 1: seconds of receiving the call from the nine one one dispatcher.
Speaker 1: So just a hair under nine minutes, that's how long
Speaker 1: they have to get to the the person. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty fast, considering again that this is a major,
Speaker 1: sprawling city. Now granted again, that's why they divide them
Speaker 1: up into zones, right, because if you just had the
Speaker 1: entire city as the place where you worked, then you
Speaker 1: might take an hour to get to somebody, and that's
Speaker 1: not acceptable, and they may not always be going to
Speaker 1: the closest hospital, right. Yeah. If you've ever seen an
Speaker 1: ambulance that has its sirens on, its lights on, or
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it doesn't, but you just see them driving
Speaker 1: with purpose, like it's clear they're they're making their way someplace,
Speaker 1: and they're driving past a hospital, you might ask yourself, well,
Speaker 1: why aren't they going into that hospital? And it's because
Speaker 1: the team has to weigh the patients, uh, the nature
Speaker 1: of the patient's problem with the various locations that are nearby,
Speaker 1: So they may not go to the closest hospital if
Speaker 1: that hospital is not well equipped to handle certain kinds
Speaker 1: of medical emergencies. So, for example, if there's a hospital
Speaker 1: that has a really good cardiac arrest response team and
Speaker 1: it's a little further away than the hospital it's closer
Speaker 1: in but doesn't really have that that equipment, Yeah, then
Speaker 1: the ambulance can go to that other hospital. By the way,
Speaker 1: you can ask the ambulance drivers to take you to
Speaker 1: a specific hospital if you want to. You can say
Speaker 1: I want to go to this particular hospital. You can
Speaker 1: do that. However, that ambulance team may or may not
Speaker 1: fulfill your request. It will depend on how far away
Speaker 1: that hospital is. That if that hospital is way outside
Speaker 1: the ambulance team's zone, then they say, listen, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to take you to this other place. It's closer.
Speaker 1: They are well equipped to deal with your your emergency
Speaker 1: and uh and we just we can't go that far
Speaker 1: to take you to this other place. Right, And a
Speaker 1: lot of our more cynical listeners might be saying, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course they're gonna take in the farthest hospital away
Speaker 1: so they can rack up the bill. But that's not
Speaker 1: that's not how they don't run a meter. They're not
Speaker 1: it's not an uber or yeah. So, but but your
Speaker 1: trips can cost a pretty penny. I mean like they
Speaker 1: can rape. They can go up way above a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for a single trip. Hundreds not unusual now. Typically
Speaker 1: insurance will end up paying for ambulance services, depending as
Speaker 1: long as the the the hit is uh determined that
Speaker 1: it was merited. Right, if you stub your toe and
Speaker 1: you call an ambulance and you ride in the ambulance
Speaker 1: and they say, yeah, you stubbed your toe, you know
Speaker 1: in a day, it's gonna feel better. You can bet
Speaker 1: that insurance is not going to cover that particular expense,
Speaker 1: right because it wasn't life threatening. Here's okay, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Let's do this instead of a stubb stub toe situation,
Speaker 1: Let's go hypothetical. Alright, don't don't really, I won't really
Speaker 1: hit you. So, Jonathan, here's what happened. You were at
Speaker 1: work and uh, someone I won't name a Coword or
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Okay, So Josh had convinced been become convinced
Speaker 1: that our office was haunted and he invited a ghost hunter.
Speaker 1: This is like last week, and after you got so irritated,
Speaker 1: got because the ghost hunter is actually in our office
Speaker 1: and the fact that the ghost hunter one exists and
Speaker 1: two is in my friend field of vision unto our right.
Speaker 1: And so you get so infuriated that you uh that
Speaker 1: you kick like a baseboard, all right, and so you've
Speaker 1: got a broken foot, but it's like seriously broken. They
Speaker 1: haul you call nine one one. Let's say they're in
Speaker 1: there in like five minutes. We're rushing you downstairs. You're
Speaker 1: still cursing at the ghost hunter, and they hop you
Speaker 1: onto the ambulance. What do you see when you get inside?
Speaker 1: What's the gear? Okay, I like that. That was the
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Okay, well, I'm glad you asked Ben. All right,
Speaker 1: So your typical ambulance has a gurney in it. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the cot that's usually on wheels that they
Speaker 1: with the legs that extend out. So when you pull
Speaker 1: the gurney out from the back of the ambulance, the
Speaker 1: legs extend. You can then wheel the gurney to the patient,
Speaker 1: put the patient on, and then when you wheel it
Speaker 1: back in, they'll you can let the legs contract and
Speaker 1: push the gurney back into it's lays flat or flat
Speaker 1: ish against the floor of the ambulance compartment. Yeah, that's great,
Speaker 1: the paramo. I think we'll get in the back of
Speaker 1: the ambulance with you. There is actually a bench usually
Speaker 1: in most of these van ambulances where typically uh they're
Speaker 1: used if you ever have to transport to people at
Speaker 1: the same time, although most ambulance crews will do their
Speaker 1: best to avoid that because it divides the attention of
Speaker 1: the medical personnel really and they can't guarantee that each
Speaker 1: person is going to get the best response. So normally
Speaker 1: you want to send as many ambulances as you have
Speaker 1: people who who need them, which is why you'll see
Speaker 1: multiple ambulances on a scene. Yeah. Now, occasionally that you
Speaker 1: know what is ideal and what is real don't match up,
Speaker 1: and you have to transport to people at the same time,
Speaker 1: and that's why there's a bench in there as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: You will also start seeing lots of equipment, some of
Speaker 1: it you might not see because it's stowed away. Ambulances
Speaker 1: are kind of like I think of it like the
Speaker 1: International Space Station, right. You have you have very limited
Speaker 1: space and you want to carry as much life saving
Speaker 1: equipment as you lee can, stuff that you might need
Speaker 1: in any given medical emergency, and there are tons of
Speaker 1: different medical emergencies, so you've got a lot of different
Speaker 1: potential stuff to carry with you. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: playing Dungeons and Dragons. You're like, I want to have
Speaker 1: every possible thing that my character might need on any
Speaker 1: given adventure, and then you're told yes, but you have
Speaker 1: to worry about weight and incumbrance, and you think, why
Speaker 1: can I just have a magical bag of holding thing
Speaker 1: that makes everything. Ambulances don't have a bag of holding,
Speaker 1: so you have to put all that stuff someplace. So
Speaker 1: pretty much every square inch of that interior is holding
Speaker 1: some equipment or or equipment is hanging off of a hook.
Speaker 1: It all depends on what we're talking about, but that
Speaker 1: equipment is pretty much what you would find in a
Speaker 1: standard emergency room, with a couple of exceptions. There's no
Speaker 1: X ray machine doesn't really fit, you know, making everyone
Speaker 1: put on lead, driving down on um. There's also no lab,
Speaker 1: so they can't run any tests or anything. They can
Speaker 1: just respond to two things that are are apparent. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then that would be stuff that will that will
Speaker 1: just give you a quick quick look at what you
Speaker 1: need to do immediately to the patient. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: again you're trying to stabilize the patient as much as
Speaker 1: possible so that you can get the patient to hospital
Speaker 1: care where a more detailed analysis can take place. So
Speaker 1: if we're talking in the case of illness as opposed
Speaker 1: to a broken foot, then that would mean they would
Speaker 1: treat any symptoms that were life threatening, but otherwise not
Speaker 1: really mess with the patient too much because they can't
Speaker 1: they can't determine exactly what's wrong, right, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of pointless at this stage in technology to have a
Speaker 1: lab on a on a vehicle like this, because labs
Speaker 1: wouldn't work quickly enough. No, you you would get to
Speaker 1: the hospital faster than you would receive any unless you're
Speaker 1: just like tooling around town, which seems like a pretty
Speaker 1: you know, inappropriate use of resources to me. So stuff.
Speaker 1: They do have diagnostic equipment like blood pressure cuffs, you know,
Speaker 1: things that being able to take a patient's vitals quickly
Speaker 1: are that's important, so stethoscope, that sort of stuff. They
Speaker 1: also have monitoring equipment like a cardiac monitor to track
Speaker 1: a patient's heartbeat, clearly important, especially if the patient has
Speaker 1: um suffered a heart attack, cardiac arrest, or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have response equipment so this is the stuff that
Speaker 1: they use to respond to emergency situations. So if you
Speaker 1: were to go into cardiac arrest, they have a defiber
Speaker 1: later so they can do the whole clear 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 gauze for treating wounds. Uh. They have
Speaker 1: you know, like the stretcher board, the solid stretcher board
Speaker 1: you price seeing 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 lot of 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 too, they were to administer oxygen. Things have
Speaker 1: on 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, was born early, or there's some
Speaker 1: kind of weird pain. Yeah, she's she's going into labor
Speaker 1: unexpectedly whatever, whatever the reason. Ambulance CRUs carry ob kits,
Speaker 1: and that contains all the supplies that an ambulance uh
Speaker 1: like a paramedic would need in order to deliver a
Speaker 1: baby on the move if the baby has decided that
Speaker 1: the baby is not gonna wait. And so it involves
Speaker 1: things like latex gloves, as umbilical clamps, scalpel uh towels
Speaker 1: like all the sort of stuff is in your typical
Speaker 1: obi quit actually looked this up online. I was looking
Speaker 1: at a company that sells the equipment to ambulances and
Speaker 1: I looked I was like, huh obi kit inquired, like,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to find out what's in this. That's how
Speaker 1: I know, because this is in a world that is
Speaker 1: far removed for me. The eagle scout me wants to
Speaker 1: buy one and just have it in my car, But
Speaker 1: I know I will totally just lose my marbles if
Speaker 1: I'm ever in that situation, which is I would just
Speaker 1: I would give you three days before you get so
Speaker 1: bored that you start using the umbilical clamps for something
Speaker 1: incredibly inappropriate attentions. Yeah, but you mentioned medication too, yep,
Speaker 1: So that includes things like any histamines and f friend uh,
Speaker 1: anything that could be used for treating life threatening injuries
Speaker 1: or illnesses. That sort of stuff is going to be there.
Speaker 1: There's you know, most of these medications are given intravenously.
Speaker 1: That's why you need a paramedic. Um so you're using
Speaker 1: an ivy. So there's also I V equipment and needles
Speaker 1: and things like that on board an ambulance. So they'll
Speaker 1: be the E M T driving paramedic. And some companies,
Speaker 1: some companies, it all depends again on the region, not
Speaker 1: just in the United States, I'm talking about globally here.
Speaker 1: Some companies have ambulance drivers who are not medically rated
Speaker 1: at all. They might have a first Aid certificate, but
Speaker 1: they their purpose is to drive the vehicle. They're 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 team. Yeah, I'm already pretty intimidated. Le Okay, so
Speaker 1: 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, and I hope you don't
Speaker 1: break that hypothetical foot on our Yeah, no joke. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was also talking about how there are you know,
Speaker 1: obviously different facilities for ambulances. Some hospitals have uh like
Speaker 1: essentially a holding area like a garage and uh and
Speaker 1: there you could get out of your ambulance and and
Speaker 1: relax as much as you can while on the job
Speaker 1: before you go on call. But other ambulance teams there
Speaker 1: their 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 have everyday such immense
Speaker 1: respect for people who do that, and we know that
Speaker 1: this is not the end. Ambulance technology continues as we
Speaker 1: record this podcast. Yeah, I wish I could tell you
Speaker 1: that there's a ton of super cool, like groundbreaking tech,
Speaker 1: but a lot of this is again because we're talking
Speaker 1: about stuff that has to be proven to be helpful.
Speaker 1: It's a slow kind of a slow evolution because we
Speaker 1: need to make sure that they work. You don't want
Speaker 1: to employ a technology or technique simply because it's new
Speaker 1: without first knowing that's helpful. Right If we were to
Speaker 1: do otherwise, than we could potentially negatively impact patients, and
Speaker 1: that's the last thing you want to do. But some
Speaker 1: of the things that have been incorporated over the past
Speaker 1: few years are howler sirens, which are they complement the
Speaker 1: regular ambulance siren. They don't replace it, but this is
Speaker 1: a lower frequency sound that penetrates further and is supposed
Speaker 1: to help alert drivers on the road that an ambulance
Speaker 1: is approaching. To me, I listened to a few because
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know if I've heard this
Speaker 1: or not, and I have heard it before, but to me,
Speaker 1: depending on the video, it sounds kind of like the
Speaker 1: old pac Man eating pellets and won't won't because it
Speaker 1: is it's essentially that that same undulating frequency, but now
Speaker 1: it's a lower pitch than the other one, and again
Speaker 1: it's underneath the regular sirens, so you hear both at
Speaker 1: the same time. Impression, thank you, Yeah, I've played a
Speaker 1: lot of pac Man. And also it is low enough
Speaker 1: frequency where you can actually feel those vibrations. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the idea being that even if you don't if you
Speaker 1: don't actively register it as you know, hearing it, you
Speaker 1: feel it, and so that alerts you that there's an
Speaker 1: ambulance coming um And they say that you can feel
Speaker 1: the pressure from those sound waves if you're within two
Speaker 1: feet of the ambulance. Some of the ambulances around the
Speaker 1: world are being fitted with closed circuit television cameras internally
Speaker 1: and externally. The internal ones are meant partially as protection
Speaker 1: for ambulance crept because there's there's always the potential that
Speaker 1: you could be accused of malpractice, and they're meant to
Speaker 1: help maintain a level of accountability as well as protection
Speaker 1: or ambulance crews to say, well, we reviewed the footage
Speaker 1: and they did exactly what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Yeah, that's gotta be huge. I'm
Speaker 1: 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. Either know who
Speaker 1: you're dealing with, you you either have to be able
Speaker 1: to say, this person who we put into a position
Speaker 1: of trust violated that trust and therefore we need to
Speaker 1: 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. Let's say that there's a riot
Speaker 1: going on in a city like here in the United States.
Speaker 1: We occasionally have them for things as silly as a
Speaker 1: sports victory, and that may mean that someone ends up
Speaker 1: being injured in the process and you have to send
Speaker 1: them out. But you also want to be careful because
Speaker 1: people are not acting rationally. So yeah, attempted ambulance theft surprise. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: and well, when you remember that there are lots of
Speaker 1: medications in that ambulance, you could understand there are some
Speaker 1: some temptations for people to try and steal them. So
Speaker 1: these externally mounted cameras are meant to be both a
Speaker 1: deterrent and also just an aid to the people inside
Speaker 1: the ambulance to keep an eye on how things are
Speaker 1: going to make sure that they stay safe, not just
Speaker 1: the patient, but the ambulance uh UM employees as well.
Speaker 1: Then you have also aboard, we're seeing air filtration systems
Speaker 1: being installed. This is not necessarily new. Again, in fact,
Speaker 1: most ambulances have climate control that's separate in the ambulance
Speaker 1: compartment from the cab, so you have two different climate
Speaker 1: control systems. And part of that is to make sure
Speaker 1: that any pathogens that are coming from the patient don't
Speaker 1: get passed on into the cabin and uh UM you
Speaker 1: know in fact the person driving the vehicle as well,
Speaker 1: so it's to try and keep them safe. UM and
Speaker 1: some also have data recording systems that keep track of
Speaker 1: the vehicle's speed that's breaking its position. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like the black box on an airplane. An interesting fact
Speaker 1: for that, in the United States, the federal government has
Speaker 1: passed some regulations requiring something like a black box to
Speaker 1: be in most automobiles. So it's not just an ambulance
Speaker 1: that has this. And while a lot of people have
Speaker 1: these or wellyan objections to it, I just want to
Speaker 1: point out that these things just records sort of flight
Speaker 1: data sort of the metadata of your driving and h
Speaker 1: A data recording system in an ambulance might be in
Speaker 1: communication with a network of some sort, but typically in
Speaker 1: your average consumed or vehicle, they're not talking to anyone. No,
Speaker 1: it's recording simply within your vehicle itself, and ultimately that
Speaker 1: system might end up helping you as a driver. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you are driving a vehicle that suffers a
Speaker 1: mechanical failure, that's a manufacturing problem, and it's recorded in
Speaker 1: there so that anything that happens, maybe maybe you have
Speaker 1: an accident and hopefully it's one that doesn't result in injury,
Speaker 1: but you have an accident that affects your car and
Speaker 1: it's due to a manufacturing problem, and that was recorded
Speaker 1: on that black box. Is gonna be thankful for that,
Speaker 1: right as opposed to someone saying, oh, you're a careless driver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's important for ambulance is to have that because
Speaker 1: they are statistically more likely to be involved in an accident. Sure,
Speaker 1: because they're they're entering areas that are already dangerous. They
Speaker 1: are also having to go through, you know, intersections, they
Speaker 1: have to go through heavy traffic at times, they have
Speaker 1: to go through opposing traffic at times. This is obviously
Speaker 1: putting themselves at a higher risk for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I see you've got an interesting little, um, little little
Speaker 1: blurb here, and that we're wrapping up so we have
Speaker 1: time for it. Okay, all right, Well, first off, thank
Speaker 1: you for for having me on. It's always a pleasure. Um.
Speaker 1: We we added some stuff folks under what we called
Speaker 1: fascinating but not totally necessary facts and we both have one. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: mine is that as of October two thousand fourteen, Dubai
Speaker 1: is home to what they call the world's fastest ambulance.
Speaker 1: It's a refitted Lotus of Aora. It can travel up
Speaker 1: to a hundred and eighty five miles per hour, and
Speaker 1: they have a couple of other things they're working on
Speaker 1: which will save for later episodes. So a Lotus of
Speaker 1: Aora is a sports car. Yes. Do you know if
Speaker 1: they actually transport patients or is this just to get
Speaker 1: responders to a patient. I think it's because I was
Speaker 1: looking at this and I think that there might be
Speaker 1: a way for them to strap somebody onto it. But
Speaker 1: you need to do a Google image. But I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think just a dispeller. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: more for them to show up on the scene and
Speaker 1: do treatment on the scene or donuts in the parking lot. Donuts.
Speaker 1: This thing, look, I mean it's going fast standing still, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what this thing is doing. And
Speaker 1: all the medical equipment is in that the quote unquote
Speaker 1: trunk of this vehicle. If you've ever had a sports
Speaker 1: car written sports car, you know trunks are that's being generous.
Speaker 1: But but rear storage compartment is filled with medical equipment
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 I
Speaker 1: don't think. But what's your what's your fascinating facts? So
Speaker 1: we do have one article on how stuff works that
Speaker 1: relates to ambulances that popped up, and this one just
Speaker 1: amused me because it popped up and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to include this because it's a day ulus.
Speaker 1: But it was one about really bizarre car races and
Speaker 1: they talked about how On Spike TV's Car Apocalypse, which
Speaker 1: keep in mind this is for a like almost like
Speaker 1: a reality game show sort of thing, they had a
Speaker 1: crazy race that involved ambulance is called a chain race. Now,
Speaker 1: a chain race is when you have two vehicles, one
Speaker 1: towing the other with a chain, but you have drivers
Speaker 1: in both vehicles. So the driver in the front vehicles,
Speaker 1: the one providing all the power and making turns and stuff.
Speaker 1: The driving the back vehicle is trying their best to
Speaker 1: maintain control over their unpowered but still very rapidly moving
Speaker 1: vehicle so that when they're going around turns and stuff,
Speaker 1: they're not slinging way off to the side. And the
Speaker 1: winner of the quote unquote races whichever vehicle still you know,
Speaker 1: is able to complete it and still be towing their
Speaker 1: respective 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: About that one, it was terrifying. I actually watched some
Speaker 1: some excerpts and and it was pretty crazy. And it
Speaker 1: was on the circular track, so it was all about
Speaker 1: spinning out, you know, like they would they would take
Speaker 1: a turn and the person in the back, you know,
Speaker 1: they have very limited vision of what they could say
Speaker 1: that most of their vision is taken up by the
Speaker 1: back of an ambulance, and so they're they're trying to
Speaker 1: their best to kind of move with it, but if
Speaker 1: they swung out too wide, it would cause the whole
Speaker 1: thing to spin out. It's kind of spectacular. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's the low down on ambulances. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think once we see more technology be proven,
Speaker 1: you know, have it's worth proven in the field, we'll
Speaker 1: see it make its way into ambulances. I don't again,
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with taking time to make sure that
Speaker 1: that's there. I I as someone who loves technology, My
Speaker 1: first instinct often is to adopt something first and then
Speaker 1: hope that the value plays out. But you don't want
Speaker 1: to do that when people's lives are at stake. I
Speaker 1: have no problem with it taking some time. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's the frustration because if something could be saving lives,
Speaker 1: you wanted to be out there, but you have to
Speaker 1: prove that that could is is real. And ambulances being
Speaker 1: so very it's obvious to me and although I will
Speaker 1: admit this is an assumption. I think it's a fair
Speaker 1: one that ambulances also have wildly differing ranges of equipment
Speaker 1: with levels of sophistication. So there are you know, surely
Speaker 1: there are ambulances that have the insta burn graft kind
Speaker 1: of technology, crazy crazy stuff that that you know that
Speaker 1: could use some more time to be proven. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not one of those those cookie cutter type things
Speaker 1: where a standard model like you don't get the standard
Speaker 1: ambulance and standard ambulance response team that just ends up
Speaker 1: being you know, put out through all of the world.
Speaker 1: As as this is what we use from here on out.
Speaker 1: There's it's definitely a great answer. Yeah, maybe maybe one
Speaker 1: day we'll 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. And that wraps up another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, please let me know the best way
Speaker 1: to do that. Is over on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is text stuff H s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tex Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.