Public Servant Lifestyle

Ambulance service launches traffic-busting city centre cycle response unit.

The London Ambulance Service (LAS) has launched a traffic-busting team of bicycle ambulances in central London.

The implementation of a unit of six ambulance technicians and paramedics on bicycles follows a two-month trial of one of the UK's first ambulance cycle response units in a one-kilometre area around Leicester and Trafalgar Squares, Soho and Covent Garden, during the summer of 2000.

The bicycle ambulances will be dispatched to emergency calls at the same time as normal ambulances. They will be targeted primarily at those patients whose conditions are classed as neither serious, nor immediately life-threatening. However, they will also attend cases in the area where patients are believed to require urgent medical assistance.

The bicycle ambulances will be fitted with blue lights and sirens, and will carry a range of life-saving equipment, including heart-starting defibrillators.

Award-winning research, from the trial in 2000, showed that the bicycle ambulance arrived at 88% of the emergency calls, to which it was dispatched, before a normal ambulance. In addition, on a third of the calls, the bicycle ambulance technician was able to cancel a full ambulance response when it was not needed. This meant that ambulances in the area were free immediately, to be dispatched to patients who were more seriously ill or injured.

Qualified ambulance technician Tom Lynch, a former British and European BMX racing champion, and the innovator behind the project, was the bicycle ambulance technician during the one-man trial in 2000. He is now the co-ordinator of the LAS Cycle Response Unit team.

Tom says: "The combination of traffic congestion and pedestrianised streets in this part of London can make it difficult for ambulances to reach patients. Bicycles are the ideal way to cut through slow-moving or stationary traffic, so that medical treatment can be given quickly before other help arrives.

"The other benefit is that if an ambulance is not required, we can cancel it, making it immediately available to respond to another 999 call."

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