What is the average emergency response time of an ambulance?
If you have ever been in the scary position of needing to call for an ambulance, you may have been surprised that several minutes passed before you heard the sirens growing closer to your position. Those minutes can seem much longer than they really are if you haven’t had any first-aid training, and all you can do is wait.
The average response time for an ambulance is, technically speaking, impossible to calculate, because gathering that information would require legal subpoena and a mountain of research. May it suffice to generalize: ambulance response time can vary from less than 2 minutes (if you live next door to a professional ambulance station) to a half-hour (if you live in a rural setting served by a volunteer ambulance squad.)
Virtually all cities with a population greater than 20,000 are served by paid ambulance technicians who work from ambulance or firehouses. Regardless of the hour of day, these squads are able to reach their assigned ambulance and begin driving within seconds of notification by 911 dispatch. (Assuming they aren’t in the middle of a shower or using the restroom!) The ambulance driver will make use of lights and sirens to respond to the scene as quickly as they can, within the limits of safety.
Smaller towns and rural areas are often served by volunteer ambulance technicians. In these areas, weeks can go by with no need for an ambulance. When one is needed, the 911 dispatcher will send a page to all all volunteer technicians, and whoever is able to respond will drive to the ambulance. As soon as a sufficient number of technicians have arrived, the ambulance driver will begin heading to the location needed. In some rural areas, response times can be just a few minutes, because the towns are so small, and “everyone knows where everyone lives.” On the other hand, if the response is to a farm or other country destination, then help sometimes can’t arrive until it’s just too late.
