The peak death rate by motor vehicle peaked at 269 per million in 1970. The motorization of ambulances alone saves far more than one in a thousand.
How many of those ambulance uses are of fairly old people? A lot of motor accidents occur for a fairly young cohort, so I’m not sure this is a great comparison. Still, the basic point seems strong.
We probably wouldn’t have dismantled our light rail system, too.
Can you expand on your logic for this? Light rail has heavy upkeep costs.
I personally would have died at 20 without ambulance motorization, for instance, and I don’t think I’m a 1 in 4000 outlier. Appendicitis doesn’t always happen at a convenient time, nor is it always recognized promptly. Right there I’d guess we’re talking over one in a thousand.
As for light rail, it does have costs. So do buses. The numbers I can find on buses put them ahead only wherever there is no existing rail system.
I would have been at least permanently brain-damaged, if not dead, without fast ambulances. Rapid response is the difference between recovering from a stroke and, well, not.
How many of those ambulance uses are of fairly old people? A lot of motor accidents occur for a fairly young cohort, so I’m not sure this is a great comparison. Still, the basic point seems strong.
Yeah, the first thing I thought was to compare QALYs rather than number of lives, too. But then I thought that ambulances are more useful for ‘sudden’ emergencies such as accidents than for ‘slower’ ones such as cancer, and then maybe a higher fraction of ‘lives saved by ambulances’ are young, otherwise healthy people than apparently obvious.
How many of those ambulance uses are of fairly old people? A lot of motor accidents occur for a fairly young cohort, so I’m not sure this is a great comparison. Still, the basic point seems strong.
Can you expand on your logic for this? Light rail has heavy upkeep costs.
I personally would have died at 20 without ambulance motorization, for instance, and I don’t think I’m a 1 in 4000 outlier. Appendicitis doesn’t always happen at a convenient time, nor is it always recognized promptly. Right there I’d guess we’re talking over one in a thousand.
As for light rail, it does have costs. So do buses. The numbers I can find on buses put them ahead only wherever there is no existing rail system.
I would have been at least permanently brain-damaged, if not dead, without fast ambulances. Rapid response is the difference between recovering from a stroke and, well, not.
Yeah, the first thing I thought was to compare QALYs rather than number of lives, too. But then I thought that ambulances are more useful for ‘sudden’ emergencies such as accidents than for ‘slower’ ones such as cancer, and then maybe a higher fraction of ‘lives saved by ambulances’ are young, otherwise healthy people than apparently obvious.