Quote:

... - these drivers do an excellent job, and should be allowed to make the odd mistake without being viewed as "dangerous" or "wreckless".


  • If you are a secretery, have you never pressed the wrong key on a keyboard?
  • If you are a receptionist have you never mis-directed a call?
  • If you are a programmer have you never missed out parenthesis?
  • If you empty bins have you never returned a bin not 100% empty, or even missed one out?
  • If you work in a bar, have you never poured the wrong pint?

We all make mistakes, it just happens that when they (rarely) do, they are more serious - but then what do you expect?



While I agree on most of what you wrote above the quote, I think the comparison with the mistakes list you made above it totally irrelevant. And while it's not right to jump to conclusions my understanding is that the conclusions that were "jumped to" in the first place were actually not misplaced as the ambulance insurance is indeed turning out to pay for (initially) a replacement car.

I would like to agree on the "highly trained" personnel who we believe is behind the wheels of such vehicles but I fear this belief is sometimes far from the truth... Sometimes in fact the more experience these people have (i.e. 30 years in this case) the more they are lead to believe that their experience will save them from most hazardous situations... Wrongly obviously...

The way I see it is extremely simple - the ambulance should never have been on the oncoming traffic side of the road - end of the story... Even more so with a 30-year experienced driver behind the wheel - these are just mistakes that cannot be tolerated from professionals. Add to that the excessive speed for the conditions and you have a recipy for disaster.