That is, Good Morning America is nothing at all like hard hitting investigative journalism. In fact, the little bits of it I’ve inadvertently watched seem more like a press release from the Democratic Party.
“Amazingly, there are no federal regulations…”
Not amazing, actually as it should be. Remember what Ronald Reagan said about the nine most terrifying words in the English language,
“I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
The video is at this link.
The video cites three cases of drivers who MIGHT have fallen asleep and been involved in accidents. It’s not clear from the video if they were on responses or not at the time of the accidents.
Then they quote an ambulance chaser, personal injury lawyer about the topic. And a doctor of some sort who cites statistics so fuzzy that the AHA wouldn’t even use them for guidelines.
As I said, GMA isn’t exactly known for rigorous journalism.
I didn’t see anything to suggest that this is a bigger issue among EMS personnel than it is among drivers in general, or even other professions that involve driving such as fire fighters, police officers, bus drivers, etc,.
No doubt some politician will DEMAND ACTION and SOON. Because as we all know, new laws passed in the heat of media driven emotion always work out well.
I’d like to see statistics broken down into accidents per shift length. I’m betting we could find a mych higher incidence among those who work 24-hour or longer shifts.
I think a lot of it will depend on calls per shift, especially calls during off hours. Some agencies that have 24 hour shifts have a relatively low call volume or call volume per unit. Places where the units don’t have quarters, staffing is reduced during off hours, have a high call volume per unit, probably have a higher incident rate. Of course being mass media, they don’t even look at MEDICAL incidents when providers are fatigued. After all we are just Ambulance Drivers, right? 😉