Speeding

This post was originally published on golifelog.com.

As you might know, I’ve been a paramedic for quite some time (ten years in 2025). I’ve been a driver of an ambulance vehicle for almost as long, too. Probably around a year shorter. So I’ve seen a bunch of new drivers and helped them train.

There isn’t a huge test to become an ambulance driver over here, but you have to drive several hundred kilometers (I think 3k) supervised, and there is also a theoretical and practical examination.

One thing stood out among many of the people that I supervised: they were speeding.
Interestingly, I think many people still see speeding as a “Kavaliersdelikt” as it is only mildly fined here in Austria. If you’re not crazy above the limit, you can probably get away with below 100 euros, or even less.

I know it can be “fun” to go above the limit, but is it really worth risking a ticket (or, if going 50 km/h more than allowed, losing your license for a few weeks)?

When I’m traveling to Vienna, there is a part of the Autobahn limited from 130 km/h to 100. I recently did the calculation on how much time you save when ignoring the limit. Two minutes. Are two minutes really worth 30 bucks (or more)? Back to the start.

You’re an aspiring paramedic vehicle driver, and you can’t manage to stay within speeding bounds? A no-go for me. I’m not even talking about large overspeeds, but it isn’t that difficult to keep a car at exactly 50 when you’re having cruise control.

I’m not blaming people for going 51, 52, or 53, but 57? Come on? I’ve had my driver’s license since 2013. About 250k kilometers in different vehicles and managed to never get a fine. Sure, I was “photographed” with the ambulance vehicles multiple times, but only with “lights on” (so in a case of emergency and justified).

One thing most of those (mainly young man) drivers forget is that they are not driving their own vehicle, but an ambulance car, and actively “promoting” the “brand”.

Being an ambulance driver for “so long,” I know how most of our Volkswagen react. I know at which speeds I can take which turns without letting the vehicle fall over, or how it performs on wet or icy roads. But some drivers just don’t seem to get it.

“If I turn on signals and sirens, I can drive as fast and recless as I want”. No, you can’t, and more importantly, you shouldn’t. I doesn’t help the person in danger if you’re never arriving. No one has a benefit when you’re lying upside down besides the road. Not only are you responsible for your own life, but at least another person, and patients are your responsibility too.

I’m always looking forward to arriving at an emergency situation where it turns out I won’t need to drive back with signals. Driving with signals is exhausting as hell because the other drivers on the road seem to go nuts.
Better not fuck it up just because you tried “saving” two minutes.

Don’t get me wrong, with signals, I might also be going 70 instead of 50 inside city limits, or way more than 130 on the autobahn, but only if I feel safe doing so and the road condition allows it.

Just think about the kid who jumped out on you, and you ran over because you were too fast. Not only might the life of the child be at risk, you will have to live with the consequences running over it. And I’m not talking about the financial and legal risks. I’m talking about the mental ones.

Can you forgive yourself killing somebody on the way saving another one just for “two minutes”? I couldn’t. It’s always better to be safe than sorry because you will have to face the judge when something goes wrong.

If the patient dies because you couldn’t chip off two minutes of the arrival time, the patient would have died anyway. Sure, two minutes can make a difference when it comes to strokes, but again, it doesn’t help when you don’t arrive at all.

(Wrote on the Freewrite Alpha, edited on my iPad.)