Emergency ambulance speed characteristics: a case study of Lesser Poland voivodeship, southern Poland

Abstract

The correct estimation of ambulance travel time is an extremely important issue from the perspective of healthcare and the security of citizens. In some events, the threat to the health or life of an injured person increases with each minute of waiting for an ambulance. The authors of this article analyzed how ambulances travel throughout the entire Lesser Poland voivodeship in southern Poland. Based on the analysis of 300 million GPS records that were collected over several years from 300 ambulances, real ambulance speed characteristics were compiled for the most important cities in the region. The obtained results regarding ambulance speed characteristics were used to understand the correlation between ambulance speed, the density of the road network, and the built-up areas of a given city. Furthermore, the impact on the speed of ambulances of traffic, time of day, day of the week, or the season was also examined. The influence of the use of ambulances’ lights/sirens on travel time was also examined. The culmination of the research was the presentation of the theoretical foundations of coverage maps and a method of implementing them based on the determined speed characteristics. The presented studies show that the speed at which ambulances move is a very local phenomenon. Also, a relatively constant average speed of ambulances throughout the whole week was found. Moreover, a difference in speed between signaled and non-signaled ambulance trips was observed. The speed characteristics that were obtained were used as input data for the development of dynamic coverage maps, which are an invaluable tool for supporting the decisions of ambulance dispatchers.

Driving Speeds in Urgent and Non-Urgent Ambulance Missions during Normal and Reduced Winter Speed Limit Periods—A Descriptive Study

“…Previous studies conducted on the general public have shown that drivers adapt their speed to the environment, such as in cases of adverse weather conditions, drivers were found to reduce their speed [ 16 ]. In contrast, a recent study from Poland established that ambulances move at a constant speed regardless of the season [ 21 ]. The data collated in this study is limited with respect to examining this association.…”

“…Nonetheless, some evidence exists for urgent missions. A recent Polish study [ 21 ] demonstrated that rush hours have no significant impact on ambulance speed during urgent missions, thereby demonstrating that ambulances move at a relatively constant average speed when performing emergency response driving. According to one Finnish study, EMS personnel may show irresponsible and indifferent attitudes when performing emergency response driving [ 22 ].…”

Methodology for creating dynamic emergency vehicle availability maps

“…This means that calcula tions carried out for ambulance accessibility maps should consider the speed characteristics specific to emergency vehicles. Therefore, this study was conducted as a continuation of the authors' previous research, which demonstrated that ambulances in the Małopolska voivodeship (Poland) maintain a relatively constant average speed regardless of the time of day, weather, or season (Lupa et al, 2021). The obtained speed characteristics served as reference data for developing the solution in this study.…”

Method consumption accounting of fuel consumption for ambulance cars

“…За даними [5] швидкість автомобіля з використанням спеціальних сигналів у середньому на 56 % вище ніж машини швидкої допомоги без сигналів. Перевищення швидкості для автомобілів спеціального призначення відображено в інших дослідженнях з різних країн [6,7]. Підвищення швидкості руху автомобілів має відображатися у нормуванні витрати палива.…”