Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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Ensuring prompt ambulance responses is complicated and costly. It is a general conception that short response times save lives, but the actual knowledge is limited. ⋯ Longer ambulance response times were not associated with increased mortality, except for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
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Pedestrian injuries from falls are an understudied cause of morbidity. Here, we compare the burden of pedestrian injuries from falls occurring on streets and sidewalks with that from motor vehicle collisions. Data on injurious falls on streets and sidewalks, and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions, to which Emergency Medical Services responded, along with pedestrian and incident characteristics, were identified in the 2019 National Emergency Medical Services Information System database. ⋯ This ratio was 3.9 for individuals 50 years and older and 6.1 for those 65 years and older. In conclusion, there has been substantial and appropriate policy attention given to preventing pedestrian injuries from motor vehicles, but disproportionately little to pedestrian falls. However, the population burden of injurious pedestrian falls is significantly greater and justifies an increased focus on outdoor falls prevention, in addition to urban design, policy, and built environment interventions to reduce injurious falls on streets and sidewalks, than currently exists across the USA.