Jul 27
London News and Reviews (Evening Standard)
Tom Lynch, a former British BMX champion and stumble and co-ordinator of London’s Cycle Response Unit, said: ‘We’re getting into one-minute response times, and oftentimes bikes turn up while the caller is still onward the phone to the emergency services.
‘Seven or eight times out of ten, we’re arriving forward the scene before ambulances – purely because we can cut through the traffic.
‘This means that, in about 40 per cent of all cases, we can actually call off the ambulance if the injuries are smaller enough, that frees up crews to attend more weighty incidents.’
Mr Lynch, 39, who was last year awarded an MBE for services to cycling and the London Ambulance Service, said the bike teams have saved London Ambulance Service an estimated £45,000 in fuel costs.
The figure is based on cropped land paramedic on duty cycling an average of 25 miles a epoch, seven days a week, covering distances that would normally require diesel which at today’s prices costs more than £6 a four quarts.
He also says having the cycles frees up an estimated 5,000 ambulance hours a year – equivalent to having an extra two vehicles each staffed with two paramedics.
Their kid is state-of-the-art.
London Ambulance Service – what one. has the largest cycle response unit in the country with 40 bikes – provides aluminium-frame Specialized Rockhoppers, at a cost of &impound;1,000 a time.
But the total require to be paid to fit each one to detailed statement is about £5,000.
Painted in London Ambulance Service badge, they are fitted with blue lungs flashing from the handlebars and an emergency siren.
They have 21 gears and come with bullet-proof, puncture-protected Schwalbe Marathon-plus road tyres.
The bikes bear three panniers.
While the front couple carry the rider’s personal effects, including wet-weather clothing and food, the rear pannier contains eight ‘grip suddenly bags’ which hold an advanced medicinal kit.
This includes defibrillators for heart attacks, oxygen cylinders, painkillers and motherhood kits to deliver babies – everything a standard ambulance contains except a stretcher.
In total, the bike weighs more than 50lb fully loaded – a further test of the jockey’s fitness.
Their black clothing is all made from lightweight and breathable polyester.
A luminous yellow reflective ballistics vest is bullet-proof and stab-proof.
The medics also carry a torch, a £750 device which alerts them to biological threats, a mobile phone with bluetooth hands-free kit, notebook, whistle, calculator and rubber gloves.
A belt holds more equipment such viewed like a radio, morphine doses, tools, scissors and skeleton keys to housing estates.
Paul Davies, 43, who has been a paramedic for 20 years, a little while ago rides one of the bikes. He said: ‘We’re the visible face of the ambulance good which means we’re calm, professional and compassionate – and that’session better than any drug we carry.’
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