The idea for this thread came to me the other day. I was walking down the street, earphones on playing loud music, when I decided to cross the road in my usual careless fashion. After two years living in Sweden I take for granted that cars will stop for a pedestrian even outside of a zebra crossing.
But thankfully, I checked to my left before I crossed the road and saw an oncoming ambulance, emergency lights on, which would probably have run me over had I not looked.
Which made me think: say an ambulance is heading off to cover an emergency. For the sake of the argument, let’s say it’s a traffic accident some distance away. On its way to the accident site, it runs over a careless pedestrian.
What would the ambulance driver have to do? Does s/he have the responsibility to stop and take care of the recently-run-over pedestrian? Or does the original emergency take precedence?
I would imagine that any vehicle that leaves the scene of an accident, ambulance or no, would be guilty of a hit-and-run. The ambulance driver should report his incident and another ambulance would be dispatched to the original emergency.
I see… But then would the ambulance be allowed to carry the pedestrian to a hospital? Or would it have to wait there until the police and another ambulance came to cover the accident?
Assuming that ambulances are subject to the same general policies and procedures of other public vehicles (assuming it’s not a private ambulance we’re talking about here, and in the US at least, I don’t know about other countries), the ambulance involved in the accident would remain, pending an investigation, and another ambulance would come and carry the pedestrian to a hospital.
The offending driver/EMT(s) of course can (and should) treat the pedestrian on the scene, seeing as they are already there.
