Bromley Transport

Critical patients killed by London speed humps

Critical Patients Killed by London Speed Humps

The Chairman of the London Ambulance Service, Sigurd Reinton, recently claimed that speed humps are killing hundreds of people in London by delaying 999 crews. He said, “For every life saved through traffic calming, more are lost because of ambulance delays.”

There are about 8,000 heart attack victims in London every year, and London has a particularly poor survival rate. One reason is no doubt because even a small delay increases the death rate enormously.

For example, 90% of victims survive if treated within 2 minutes, but it falls to 10% if treatment is delayed for 6 minutes. So, for every additional minute of delay caused, up to an extra 800 victims of cardiac arrest could die. This compares with a total of 300 people who die from traffic accidents.

Mr Reinton complained that the increasing number of anti-car measures such as speed humps, road closures, road narrowing, and throttle points caused significant delays in responding to emergencies. Ambulances had to go even slower if carrying a critically ill patient.

Note that Kevin Knight, who is responsible for local London Ambulance services, also spoke against speed bumps using the same arguments at the recent council Environment Portfolio holders meeting. He said they were now meeting the government target of reaching 75% of life-threatening calls within 8 minutes, but it was getting more and more difficult to do so and even a few seconds delay could impact the chance of survival for heart attack victims.

Traffic calming features caused significant delays – for example 50% of the ambulances from one station would have had to go through the proposed Leesons Hill “throttle” where there would be queuing traffic.

The study main consisted of asking 36 paramedics from different parts of the country for their experiences, and their response to humps. For example, 66% would deviate to avoid humps even when on emergency calls, and half of them were willing to add 2.5 minutes to the response time as a result.

88% of paramedics felt that speed humps interfered with CPR or other medical procedures. All respondents considered that several patient conditions were affected detrimentally by speed humps, particularly spinal or back injuries, and fractures generally.

In summary, it was clear that ambulance staff take a very dim view of the impact of speed humps on their ability to do their job, and that there are negative implications for patients.

“Road humps cause us problems because they obstruct the passage of ambulances, increasing the time it takes for medical help to reach seriously ill or injured patients, exacerbating the discomfort of patients with spinal injuries, sometimes making it impossible for paramedics to give life-saving treatment to patients when on the move, and damaging our vehicles.”. This is a clear and succinct summary of the views of many ambulance staff.