A London paramedic says road crashes are among the most harrowing 999 calls she has to attend because so many of them are “preventable”.
Natalie Jones said it was vital for everyone to obey the “rules of the road” and not become distracted, for example by using a smartphone.
She told the Standard: “The speed limits are there for a reason. Red lights are there for a reason. Stop lines are there for a reason.
“I would ask people to obey the rules and not get distracted, as these are the biggest factors we see involved in these incidents.”
She recalled one incident in Oxford Street where a young woman suffered head injuries after stepping out between two buses to get an “iconic shot” for Instagram.
Ms Jones, who has worked at London Ambulance Service for four years and gives up her spare time free of charge to educate children about road danger, spoke out to mark Vision Zero week.
Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Vision Zero strategy aims to reduce the number of fatalities and serious injuries in the capital to zero by 2041.
Figures for 2021 show the death toll is at its lowest on record – mainly due to lockdown – but that the number of cyclist deaths and serious injuries are rising year-on-year.
LAS attended nearly 11,000 road traffic collisions last year. Ms Jones said she was called to a serious road crash about once a month.
She said: “It’s just heart-breaking for the families: lives can be lost or changed for ever in one moment. These patients really do stay with you because almost every road collision I’ve been to has been preventable.
“I think that’s what makes them so tough – because you know they shouldn’t have happened. Sadly it’s often children who suffer catastrophic injuries, or the elderly.
“When I talk to kids I often tell them about a girl we went to who’d been badly injured on Oxford Street. She had stepped out onto the road between two buses, facing away from the traffic to get an iconic shot of the famous street.
“People don’t want to put down their phones, but it’s not worth dying or getting hurt for an ‘Insta-worthy’ shot.
“Everyone should take responsibility for their own safety – and also those around them. Road users who can cause the most harm to others should be especially cautious when out on the road.
“The majority of the collisions I attend are preventable. If they had just stopped to think for a second or put their phone down or looked before they stepped out or obeyed the traffic laws in place, then this collision wouldn’t have happened and we wouldn’t have had to attend to them in such a state.
“Everyone on the road has some degree of responsibility. A cyclist undercutting a bus in their blind spot – realistically the bus driver can’t be held at fault.
“Similarly if an e-scooter or pedestrian [moves] when they don’t have the right of way… they have responsibility, not the vehicle that may have struck them.
“It’s not just the people involved in those incidents but the family and friends that aren’t expecting to get that news that their loved one has been injured or potentially even killed.
“These can be very emotive scenes and can be quite distressing for us as ambulance clinicians.”
She said smartphones were a distraction to both pedestrians and motorists. “If you are in a car and you go to look at your phone, that is precious seconds you aren’t seeing that child run across the road, or seeing that cyclist pass into your blind spot.
“Similarly pedestrians not looking up from their phone, maybe having headphones in, not aware of the traffic around them, they don’t have time to respond. They are not going to be able to avoid a potential hazard in front of them. At a number of incidents, looking at a smartphone is definitely a factor.”
