cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/93717
Is this fuck cars or fuck the us?
Show of hands, who pays for ambulances regardless of why?
My intention is definitely “fuck cars.” The fucked-up thing here is that even ambulance drivers, who should know better more so than almost anybody, are incompetently right-hooking cyclists. Billing him for it is merely the icing on the shit-cake.
A lot of EMTs work 24-hour shifts, and 48-hour shifts are not uncommon. The thought that the ambulance driver on the road next to me might be at hour 46 is… frequently worrying.
The problem isn’t the EMTs being incompetent, the problem is with the industry standards and the employers.
I was forced to work a few 24+ hour shifts in healthcare and working on zero sleep fucked me up. It gave me migraines, vomiting, insomnia, manic depression and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.
It is beyond cruel and inhumane that employers can force people to work without sleep. It is so fucked that not allowing someone to sleep is considered a form of torture by the Geneva convention.
So your alternative would be that ambulances should no longer use cars? From my perspective all kind of emergency services such as fire department, law enforcement, ambulances should be the very last cars we get rid of as a society. They have to be fast and they need to transport a lot of stuff and people.
The rest of the world does without GIANT and dangerous emergency vehicles for one. They still put out fires and transport sick people. How american fire departments are getting people killed (video from “not just bikes”)
Ahhh okay, but you’re not trying to argue that paramedics should be on bicycles or taking public transit! That was the thing that puzzled me.
I think we could avoid a lot of the issues with pedestrians and cyclists getting hit by motor vehicles by getting rid of stroads and properly designing cities to separate streets and roads.
I will always opt for a Lyft or Uber, unless I am actively dying from something that could kill me in 30 minutes or less, like a massive severed artery or something like that.
They are just as fast, and if I start literally dying in the hospital waiting room, they will most likely pay attention.
The only way it makes sense to take an ambulance to a hospital is if you literally have no other option, or if you are so seriously injured you’ve already lost consciousness or are mostly paralyzed.
You can call an ambulance, paramedics arrive, stabilize you, and then refuse to get in the ambulance.
This costs you nothing.
Then you just bite on your wallet and take an Uber or Lyft, which costs 10 to 20 dollars.
Get in the ambulance? 1 to 3 thousand dollars, for a shitty version of the care you’ll recieve in the hospital anyway, can’t avoid those costs.
