Naturally, the city administration has tried to cut it down by employing various measures such as the fire department's taking over of the city's EMS in 1996. Their 1997 data show that they were able to cut the average response time by more than two minutes, to six minutes 43 seconds within a year. However, the response time to cardiac arrests in 1998 was still over 10 minutes in half of the cases. By comparison, EMS vehicles in Phoenix had a response time of four minutes and 12 seconds in life-threatening emergencies. In such situations, ambulance drivers have to worry about not stopping too fast so that the cars behind do not crash into the ambulance, she says.
Traffic is a lot worse now then back then.
Paradoxically, it is often safer and faster for ambulance drivers when they do not turn on the lights and sirens. They panic and pull over to the left instead of to the right. Or they stop right in the middle of the street. The CAVA ambulance does not turn on the lights or the siren especially if the patient is not in a critical state, she says. It works really well.