Deadening the siren

How many have we killed unknowingly? 

This is an uncomfortable but valid question. Seconds are precious to keep a dying heart pumping. A few minutes is all it takes for the brain to lose oxygen completely from the time the heart stops beating. Then life is taken.

When an ambulance’s siren blares, all motorists around it are in no rush or stress. It is not their child, or spouse, or father inside that noisy ambulance anyway. So some in front would speed up and take advantage of the slight passage provided. Some would make a token nudge, but would justify not making too much effort due to traffic, and some simply drive on and allow the ambulance to find its way to overtake. I even saw one time while driving, an indifferent driver who stopped at the red light with the ambulance trapped behind his car.

This is in the Philippines. It seems cultural that we have an aversion to queuing, have trouble respecting lanes, and drivers of our public utility vehicles respect only the idea of meeting their daily boundaries. Our foreign visitors say that Filipinos are kind and friendly, but behind the wheel, the Filipino becomes an entirely different person.

Never mind road courtesies. But the ambulance, when someone’s life is on the line, should be a totally different story. That person fighting for his life, with his family worrying beyond words, depends on you and me, to provide some passage way—for survival.

If you ask what the law on the matter is, there is very little. Republic Act 4136 or the Land Transportation and Traffic Code clearly provides an instruction to motorists to give way to ambulances and other emergency vehicles. It says “upon the approach of any police or fire department vehicle, or of an ambulance giving audible signal, the driver of every other vehicle shall immediately drive the same to a position as near as possible and parallel to the right-hand edge or curb of the highway, clear of any intersection of highways, and shall stop and remain in such position, unless otherwise directed by a peace officer, until such vehicle shall have passed.” For not doing so, the law imposes a fine not more than P50. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), however, is stricter and imposes a P150 fine for motorists who fail to give way to ambulances and other emergency vehicles. So there is no real legal consequence, and the penalty is peanuts.

If you ask about what natural law applicable here, where I am not an authority, it is perhaps love your neighbor as yourself, or for that matter, like your own family, even at least on rare occasions of emergency.

Can we step back though from morbidity on this Sunday and ask: How do you call an ambulance?

Don’t dial 911 because if you unmindfully press additional 1’s, you may be calling an express pizza delivery hotline. In the Philippines, the closest (if one dares call it an equivalent) is 117, the PNP hotline. Run by Patrol 117 Commission, this P1.4-billion project (per news report), operates with 16 call centers nationwide. Their main function is to report, relay and respond to emergencies.

Once 117 receives a call, they will relay the emergency to the Red Cross or the local government of the place where the call originates. If there are no ambulances available, 117 will ask if you want to avail a private ambulance that will cost around P5,000, excluding value-added tax and other charges. If luck is not on your side, you will then be advised to take a taxi. Reactions of the public on 117 are quite mixed. Obviously, this leaves a lot to be desired.

Sadly, even local governments, save perhaps a few, do not have the system, hardware, dedicated workforce or political will to provide this invaluable emergency service to its constituents. I am personally aware how certain private groups, like the one headed by a Rotarian president in one city in Cavite, took it upon themselves to provide fire truck and ambulance services to the community. Without these good Samaritans in the community, the following may help today or in the future:

1. For quick access to ambulance services, know and keep handy the phone numbers of your preferred hospital, the Red Cross, a taxi company, and of course, 117.

2. If you are enterprising and compassionate, an ambulance service business is worth considering. In India, a social enterprise was put up to respond to the increasing need of ambulance service in the country. Using market-based solutions to help provide affordable healthcare services, its fee depends on the patient’s socio-economic status, which they can tell by the hospital the patient goes to.

3. Legislation must be put in place for the hotline, but more so, to compel hot response, acquire physical resources and manpower, and create an effective network for emergency response.

4. When you hear a siren, do everything humanly possible to give way; and those not in the lane of the ambulance should also give way to the vehicle trying to give way.

For all of us, it will help too if we stop thinking that the siren is a fake emergency. Even an empty ambulance may be on its way to fetch a person battling to survive. If the siren emergency is fake, it is their fraud and sin. We can always err on the side of saving a life.

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Alexander B. Cabrera is the chairman and senior partner of Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines. He also chairs the tax committee of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP). Email your comments and questions to [email protected]a. This content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.