What is the Government doing to assist ambulance drivers?
Mr KNOWLES: Honourable members would be aware that every single day ambulance drivers and ambulance officers around the State visit thousands of accident scenes; in Sydney alone, there are 1,300 call-outs every day. Getting to an accident scene quickly and safely is, of course, the priority and an essential component of the ambulance officer’s daily work. But ambulance officers are often obstructed by drivers who simply will not move out of the way of an ambulance that is travelling to the scene of a trauma. Those drivers either do not know the rules, or they just do not care. For example, last month an ambulance driving along the Great Western Highway near Blacktown got trapped behind a Range Rover for more than three kilometres. The Range Rover driver took almost every opportunity to obstruct the ambulance as it was trying to get past. The ambulance was under siren and flashing lights. It was, of course, sounding its horn, trying to let the driver of the Range Rover know that it was
