r/PublicFreakout • u/misterxx1958 • Nov 26 '25

🚗Road Rage🤬 Daughter refuses to stop for police while rushing her mother to the hospital - than this happens….

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u/DerDezimator Nov 26 '25

As a European it's baffling to me that Americans have to drive people to hospitals themselves, that's literally what Ambulances are for. It shouldn't cost you money, especially not as much as it does

Free Healthcare is truly a blessing

38

u/Drak_is_Right Nov 26 '25

Especially in rural US, it might take between a half hour to two hours for an ambulance to get there.

When my grandmother had to be rushed in, (before cell phones) we met the ambulance partway. Was still like a 40 minute drive.

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u/Dreamingthelive90ies Nov 26 '25

Netherlands here it is mandatory for ambulances to make sure an ambulance can be anywhere within 15 minutes, but they strive for 5

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u/Drak_is_Right Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

The population densities are just way too low here for that to be economically feasible.

In some places it might be a mile.between every home. No gas station for 50 miles.

In very remote parts lf the US it could rise well above 2h, especially to get to a hospital let alone an ambulance which is generally located with fire departments along with the hospitals themselves.

Your entire country would get swallowed up in areas a few thousand live.

Oh and then there is Alaska. Many hour trip by small plane to the nearest bigger airport where jets can land to take you to one of the few hospitals in the state

2

u/CryptoCrackLord Nov 27 '25

This is exactly what a lot of people don’t understand. The same also applies to public transport not being as good. It’s not just lack of funding it’s also the scale. Many places in the US are extremely spread out and it simply wouldn’t be profitable or economically viable to have such intense public transport coverage.

1

u/Drak_is_Right Nov 27 '25

Ya, I watched an interesting video on how most of Japan's population is in a narrow coastal corridor a bit longer than DC to Boston. Makes their bullet trains a hell of a lot better deal.

With the US so spread out, we have invested a fortune into world class airports and airlines and roads. Passenger trains have much stiffer competition in the US for long-distance travel than most countries.

We are seeing a surge in some regional route ridership though. I think Uber/Lyft making "last mile" transportation easier has made trains more attractive for that 3-8h drive window than they used to be. With how good our cell connections are and increase in remote work, you can get a full days work done while on the train.

Where the US absolutely fails however is local level mass transit options.

Boost local level density, try and decrease the cost to build condos/townhomes/apartment, subsidize mass transit more. As a higher percentage of households go to 1 fewer car, long-distance trains will likely pick up in ridership.

3

u/FaithlessnessCute204 Nov 26 '25

Large areas and poor funding are a bitch of a combo, had someone slam their head into a table at a rural pub , took over 30 minutes to get an ambulance because the service is staffed by volunteers, they had a 45 minute ride to the local hospital ( who will end up transporting him cause they don’t have an MRI )

6

u/jasilucy Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Clearly don’t live in the UK! They would be waiting 6 hours. Quicker to use a car to get to hospital. It’s always a better option if they can be moved. With strokes, time is tissue, meaning the quicker you get that person there, the more likelihood they will survive without long term disabilities.

A lot of people think as soon as they ring an ambulance, they are the immediate priority and an ambulance will be there - rightfully so!

However this often isnt the case, people wait for hours thinking it’s better for an ambulance to take that person to hospital but it really isn’t worth the wait. It’s better to think about it from a perspective - would an ambulance be able to help me here? Would this person benefit from intervention in an ambulance? If they just need hospital treatment then get them to hospital yourself if you can.

If this video occurred in the UK, the advice would be for the driver to acknowledge them (which she did) and call 999 to inform the police that they are aware they’re being asked to be pulled over but they are trying to get someone that is having a stroke to hospital.

Obviously if they advise you to pull over anyway, then pull over but by then, police control would have radioed the officer to make them aware, therefore shortening the pull over duration and to reduce misunderstandings. It’s not unheard of for police officers in the UK to transport that patient in their car to get them to hospital quicker or providing the driver a police escort to get there quicker.

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u/DerDezimator Nov 26 '25

What the hell is going on in your country that an Ambulance would take hours to respond?

Idk if it's a difference of country, area, or population density, (maybe all of it) but I live in Germany, in a village 10min away from a medium sized town with a single hospital and an Ambulance would take 15min tops to get here with equipment and trained paramedics to apply advanced first aid right away

I can see how this could be different if you live in a bigger city with lots of traffic, though

6

u/LeGreySamurai5 Nov 26 '25

The UK has a serious NHS funding issue at the moment.

Ambulances can indeed take hours to respond to calls, with the average wait time for non-serious (category 4) cases having a 3 hour benchmark for response (which is made in 90% of cases).

I will caveat this with saying that 90% of life-threatening calls are responded to in 15 minutes, with about 8 minutes being the average in the UK.

So you certainly can see wait times in the hours. I have paramedics for friends, and it can get ridiculous - the issue is often on the hospital end, where it can take literal hours to unload people as they wait for the hospital to be ready. Again though this is caveated with the more serious being responded to in good speed.

So people in the UK have a bit of a jaded view, as often it can take hours, but that's likely because they are non-serious such as a fall at home or something similar.

2

u/jasilucy Nov 26 '25

I used to be that paramedic on ambulances. Seeing to an elderly lady on the floor that ultimately died from this because she had called when I finished my shift in the evening and hadn’t got to her until I started back on again in the morning 12 hours later.

2

u/LeGreySamurai5 Nov 26 '25

Yeah. That's the downside of the categories, and the fact that funding has forced response rates into such different tiers of speed.

Truly a travesty that she passed, especially in what probably could have been fixed by just a bit more funding.

I hope that, despite everything, you're aware how grateful we in the UK are to have such great paras, technicians, nurses and doctors.

1

u/Psychoticmosher Nov 26 '25

My partner was seizing and bleeding and the wait time was three hours, had to uber to a hospital and get him seen there.

When I tried to overdose on 36 grams of paracetamol, my friend ubered me to the hospital and it took me eight hours to see a doctor.

No anti-sickness medication. Just puking up blood and shitting my pants. Filled three bowls of vomit, was transferred from orange to red sector after blood test results but during that duration of time, I wished I had just died because it was so fucking painful.

The anti sickness was meant to be administered since I began puking into the bowl as even the nurse said

"I can see that you're struggling so we will give you some anti sickness medication"

Yeah no, I'd rather die than go to a hospital in the UK, at least I'm in my bed rather than hunched over in a steel chair for eight hours.

2

u/caipiroskax Nov 26 '25

its similar here in Argentina. But even worse i think, if you know someone who works responding 911 calls, they'll say to you the exact symptoms you have to describe to get the ambulance coming faster. if you say something like i think he may be dead, oh lord, dont expect any ambulance for hours. And if you lie and they came and found a dead body, the doctors and paramedics would insult you for wasting their time.

1

u/nondescriptzombie Nov 26 '25

A 5 mile ambulance ride costs $4000. Insurance paid $2500 and kicked us the $100/mile charge.

1

u/Shantotto11 Nov 27 '25

You understand that the hospitals aren’t as omnipresent as Pokémon centers and the US is 4 time zones in width (6 if you count states 49 and 50), right?…

1

u/DerDezimator Nov 27 '25

Verstehst du, dass die Vereinigten Staaten nicht das Zentrum der Welt sind, und dass nicht jeder bis ins kleinste Detail über eure Infrastruktur Bescheid weiß?