Investigating Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Response Time to Crash Sites in Urban Areas

In U.S., every year more than 36,000 people die and approximately 4.4 million are injured in traffic crashes. Immediately after a crash occurrence, emergency medical services (EMS) play a critical role in saving lives by providing patients with the earliest urgent medical care and a means of transportation to medical facilities. It is crucial that the EMS response time (EMS-RT), defined as the time required for EMS to reach the site after notification of the crash, be kept as low as possible in order to reduce the crash severity. This EMS-RT may depend on many factors including weather condition, light condition, traffic condition, land use, and location of EMS facilities. In this study, the factors that may have an impact on the EMS-RT were identified using statistical modeling technique. More than 58,000, EMS-RTs were investigated for this study, and results revealed that EMS-RT is significantly higher in adverse weather conditions, on weekdays, within nighttime hours, in urban areas, and on highways as predicted. Also, as the number of crashes in a specific day increases, the EMS-RT is notably on the rise as well.