Ambulance hits pedistrian in crosswalk on 7th Ave.

How badly hurt was the woman, could you tell?

You should absolutely call the cops and tell them what you saw.

This type of thing happens often (drivers throwing on the siren at the last second before they do something very risky)

I almost had an ambulance plow into my car while I was on the approach to 4th avenue.

He obviously only wanted to beat the light.

I have no idea who you report these sorts of incidents to and it is
disgusting that immediate responses seem to come at the WRONG times!

I'm not for frivolous lawsuits, but that's not frivolous. Maybe getting the fuck sued out of them a few times (the ambulance firm, the emergency response agency AND the individual driver) will make them take some sort of corrective action both against individuals and agency-wide.

I have almost been hit by Access-a-Ride more times than I can count - especially when I was walking more slowly with crutches/a cane.

DR, I hope that if that woman needs witnesses, somehow she finds her way back to you so you can report what happened.

Drunken Revival wrote: I'm here to help....

Ok, let's go back to talking about pizza and jizz, orange cats and armchairs grammar.

if you don't want to talk about pizza and jizz

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/05/17/eyes-on-the-street-park-slope-pedestrian-struck-by-ambulance/

Subject: Wrong

homeowner wrote: Was the ambulance an FDNY (city owned and operated) one or run by a hospital or private entity? That will make a difference in the response/and response time.

You posted that comment like you have inside knowledge about how the EMS system works. It may seem like FDNY ambulances have better or worse response times only because 60% of the 911-responding ambulances in the City say FDNY on them. However, the other 40% of 911-ambulances in NYC that operate under the Fire Department (i.e. New York-Presbyterian {which also includes Methodist Hospital, Community Hospital of Brooklyn and Westchester Square in the Bronx}, Lenox Hill, St. Luke's-Roosevelt, Brookdale, Maimonides, Long Island College Hospital, etc.) are dispatched the same way as the FDNY ones are: by GPS.
So let's use this as an example. A pedestrian struck on 7 Av/9 St in Brooklyn. It is extremely busy in Brooklyn and the nearest ambulance according to the GPS is an FDNY ambulance responding from Flatbush Av/Atlantic Av. The ambulance gets assigned the call and begins a response. They are fighting through traffic on Flatbush Avenue and five minutes into the response, they are driving up Flatbush and a car accident occurs right in front of them. They are now cancelled from that pedestrian struck call and assigned to this one on, let's say, Flatbush/6 Av. Now, let's say the next unit to come up as "closest suggested unit" in the Fire Department's GPS for that original pedestrian struck call is a Long Island College Hospital Ambulance. Now they weren't the closest unit at first, but the FDNY ambulance got "flagged," as we say, for another call. So you now have a LICH unit coming from a further distance than the FDNY one was. So for this example, we will say the LICH unit is sitting in Red Hook and is dispatched the pedestrian struck call now 7 minutes after the initial 911 call came in. They fight their way across Hamilton Avenue and up 9th Street and it takes them 6 minutes to respond to the call. They arrive on scene let's say 13-14 minutes after the original call came in. Does that mean that the LICH unit takes longer to respond to calls? Of course not. Like I said we are dispatched by GPS both FDNY ambulances and what are called "911-Participating Ambulances" or "Voluntary Hospital" ambulances. This could obviously go either way. You also need to understand there is a priority system. So if a unit gets dispatched to a sprained ankle, this is a very low priority in the EMS system deemed an "Injury." If the unit responding to that call comes up first recommended by the computer's GPS for a higher priority call (let's say an asthma attack or a cardiac arrest), they will be cancelled from the sprained ankle and assigned to the higher priority. I have seen this same process go on five times in a row so that it now takes 40 minutes for an ambulance to respond to the sprained ankle. If it happens to be a LICH unit, does that mean their response time is poor? Of course not. In reality the LICH unit might have a 3 minute response to the job. Hope this explains things and helps clear up the obvious misconception to the fact that FDNY has better or worse response times than the hospital ambulances. In reality FDNY and Hospital ambulances have nearly IDENTICAL response times, even though it may not seem that way to you.

jeffrey wrote: EMTNYC, welcome to Brooklynian and thanks for a very informative initial post.

Thank you, sir!

Drano wrote: Sort of on a related subject, anyone know how that cyclist that got crunched on PPSW on Monday made out? The ambulance very nearly caused a few more casualties on the way to him...

PPSW is a scary place to ride a bike, (as is Ocean Ave on the east side. Lots of traffic, way too narrow. Let's hope the DOT extends the bike lane to circle the entire park.