Ambulance driver sacked for over speeding to help patient who couldn't breathe

Published: 2013 September 11 19:28:03 (4632 Views)

A life-saving ambulance volunteer has been sacked because he drove too fast to answer a 999 call to a patient who had collapsed and was unable to breathe.

First Responder Godfrey Smith was driving a high visibility ambulance Land Rover, but was told he was being dismissed because he drove a 33mph in a 20mph zone.

The stunned 64-year-old, who has been saving lives by being first on the scene of serious incidents for 15 years, said he was told he had lost his job because he had 'breached road traffic law.'

Mr Smith doesn't deny speeding down an Oxford shopping street but says he was responding to an urgent patient call.

Bosses at South Central Ambulance Service dismissed Mr Smith after checking instruments in his liveried Land Rover and discovering he had travelled down a shopping street in the centre of Oxford at 13mph faster than he should have done.

The new 20mph speed restriction zones have been much-criticised by local drivers in Oxford who claim they cause traffic jams.

Mr Smith, who lives in Faringdon, was called by ambulance controllers to go from the Carfax centre in Oxford to the city's St Clements area, to give immediate treatment to a man who had collapsed with breathing problems.

A spokesman for the ambulance trust said that responders did not have the same rights to break road laws as the driver's of ambulances but it refused to comment on Mr Smith's case specifically.

A letter to Mr Smith from the trust said: 'It is felt that your standard of driving on this occasion fell far below that required of someone driving a SCAS marked vehicle.'

In June the same ambulance service issued an urgent plea for volunteers after the number of drivers - who completed 19,800 trips in 2012 - dropped from 45 to 28.

A spokesman for SCAS said at the time that it would need 90 extra county ambulances to meet life-saving response times.

Mr Smith has been driving for 46 years and says he always obeys speed limits.

He has attended more than 2,000 call-outs and saved numerous lives.

He added that the Sat-nav was still reporting the road was a 30mph zone and he was unaware he had broken the speed limit.

At least 60 people have signed a petition supporting the sacked man since Monday.

Mr Smith's son Matthew, 19, has now resigned as a responder in support of his father and handed his marked ambulance car back.

He said: 'I thought it was bad enough for my dad to see that every day and to know that he can't use it, let alone me going to use it.'

Former patient David Hatton said his life was saved by Mr Smith in 2007 when he collapsed with a heart attack at his Faringdon home.

Mr Hatton said Mr Smith's use of a defibrillator and CPR kept him alive in the hour before he got to hospital.

He added: 'It is very petty. How can they get people to volunteer for the service and not give them the tools to do the job?'

Ambulances drivers employed by the trust have to get to 75 per cent of most serious calls in eight minutes and latest figures, for July, show it hit 84 per cent of its target in Oxfordshire.

The same trust hit the headlines last year after it was disclosed it one of its senior officers was a convicted murderer.

The trust had failed to check on the criminal past of operations manager Robert King before employing him.

Mr King retired after he was arrested for drink-driving before his previous conviction was revealed.

The trust refused to justify its action in relation to Mr Smith.

- DM

Tags: 999, emergency, 911,

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