I don't think either of those are legal. The only law I can think of that has a relevant exception would be the law about phone use while driving, which has a 911 call exemption.
Regardless, I think those situations are relatively rare and the potential lives saved would pale in comparison to daily traffic deaths
I saw a post here recently about how even ambulance companies are considering revising their policies for speeding and disrupting traffic because there's data showing it leads to worse mortality outcomes. And that's WITH a professional ambulance driver using their lights and sirens
Are either of those things really legal? I'm highly doubtful. In fact, at least for the latter, the official government position is to call an ambulance, don't take someone to the hospital yourself.
Unless you’re a character in an action movie, no. Your dying patient is going to be worse off when you get t-boned driving that aggressively or simply shaking them around. The primary limiting factor in a city are other vehicles, not speed, and not having a siren matters more there.
Look, I get it, it’s fun to pretend that you’d have an excuse to drive like Tom Cruise but that kind of thing doesn’t matter in real life. If you need to get to the hospital, the limiting factor is traffic and safety: you can’t go faster than the guy ahead of you and the things which could save you time are things like running lights which have a high risk unless you live somewhere with no cross traffic and excellent visibility. In most cases, the time you save is likely to be less than you save by not parking when you get there and less than you’d save by having an EMT drive them in a vehicle which has both legal permission and lights & sirens to get traffic out of the way.
I’m not the one arguing against something which would provably save thousands of lives annually. You’re welcome to show your homework that there are a comparable number of cases where the difference between life and death comes down to being able to exceed the speed limit in an urban area.
That is a completely different argument than you made above
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It may be the case, and I agree likely, that automated speed limits save lives on net.
Speeding on the way to the hospital is a very small subset of speeding, and you claimed that speeding on the way to the hospital caused more deaths than delay, and seemingly implied that it was impossible for delay to be more deadly, even on a case by case basis.
What you’re hoping is that a police officer would agree with your decision and choose not to write you a ticket. That might work, but if you try this you are gambling on that and almost certainly not saving any meaningful amount of time.
Not debating the legality (it surely isn't), but I suspect in some cases a speeding ticket may end up costing less (even including the increased insurance premiums) than the ambulance fees.
Likely but I was simply responding to the false assertion that it was legal. It’s a common lie people use to present the most positive spin for their unwillingness to drive safely in conditions which are exceedingly unlikely to be more serious than “didn’t feel like waking up prudently early”.
Regardless, I think those situations are relatively rare and the potential lives saved would pale in comparison to daily traffic deaths
I saw a post here recently about how even ambulance companies are considering revising their policies for speeding and disrupting traffic because there's data showing it leads to worse mortality outcomes. And that's WITH a professional ambulance driver using their lights and sirens
Edit: here's the link https://www.ems1.com/ambulance-safety/articles/14-groups-iss...