I think you’re probably joking, but it’s also a fun idea to take seriously.
The biggest legal hurdle to this might be insurance. Any transporting ambulance has a lot of very tightly controlled drugs on board—who would be responsible if an Ambolyft passenger stole some?
Anyways, I’m not convinced that this model (focusing on emergent transport) would represent an actual time savings for passengers. i assume that no delay to the ambulance is morally acceptable; tolerating emergency response delays in the name of profit would of course change this calculus significantly. Professional ambulance crews hang out at the station all day waiting for calls, so a hypothetical passenger would have to be hanging out at the exact station from which the ambulance is dispatched at the time the call arrives. This means the passenger would have to make their way to the station via other transport options, and then wait around for an unknowable duration until a call comes in that’s going in their general direction.
However, the lights-and-sirens ambulances aren’t the only ambulances on the road. Ambulances and helicopters also do non-emergent transports, moving patients from one facility to another. If a rider lived near a hospital that patients often have to be transported to from out of the area, they could potentially catch a ride out of that area on a now-empty vehicle that had brought a patient in. When a transport toward a facility is initiated, you have the entire travel time to get the ride buyer to the destination facility, or possibly even allow many prospective buyers to bid on seats for the vehicle’s return trip.
Riders would probably have to be vetted, possibly background checked, to make sure they seemed unlikely to attempt to steal the drugs or harm the crew of the ambulance, but that might not be an insurmountable hurdle. There might even be a market for this kind of transport, perhaps among medical personnel scheduled for shifts at other facilities, or people who frequently visit a medical center for a short procedure and then need to return to an outlying area.
I think you’re probably joking, but it’s also a fun idea to take seriously.
The biggest legal hurdle to this might be insurance. Any transporting ambulance has a lot of very tightly controlled drugs on board—who would be responsible if an Ambolyft passenger stole some?
Anyways, I’m not convinced that this model (focusing on emergent transport) would represent an actual time savings for passengers. i assume that no delay to the ambulance is morally acceptable; tolerating emergency response delays in the name of profit would of course change this calculus significantly. Professional ambulance crews hang out at the station all day waiting for calls, so a hypothetical passenger would have to be hanging out at the exact station from which the ambulance is dispatched at the time the call arrives. This means the passenger would have to make their way to the station via other transport options, and then wait around for an unknowable duration until a call comes in that’s going in their general direction.
However, the lights-and-sirens ambulances aren’t the only ambulances on the road. Ambulances and helicopters also do non-emergent transports, moving patients from one facility to another. If a rider lived near a hospital that patients often have to be transported to from out of the area, they could potentially catch a ride out of that area on a now-empty vehicle that had brought a patient in. When a transport toward a facility is initiated, you have the entire travel time to get the ride buyer to the destination facility, or possibly even allow many prospective buyers to bid on seats for the vehicle’s return trip.
Riders would probably have to be vetted, possibly background checked, to make sure they seemed unlikely to attempt to steal the drugs or harm the crew of the ambulance, but that might not be an insurmountable hurdle. There might even be a market for this kind of transport, perhaps among medical personnel scheduled for shifts at other facilities, or people who frequently visit a medical center for a short procedure and then need to return to an outlying area.
Yup! But I appreciate the serious consideration regardless