Toll station held up ambulance in N China

World
Europe

When seeing an ambulance on a road with its siren on, the usual etiquette is to give-way and let it pass by as quickly as possible.

However, on the night of April 1, an ambulance was stopped at the exit of a toll station in Xingtai City, in northern China’s Hebei Province, where it was asked to pay a toll before passing through. The ambulance was on its way to hospital at the time with a patient on board.

Screenshot from Beijing News

In a video that surfaced online, loud sirens could be heard as the ambulance was stopped at a toll booth and asked to pay. The driver refuses, and the two end up in a quarrel, whilst the patient waits in the van.

The driver said that he had already paid the toll when he went to collect the patient, and as he was clearly in the midst of an emergency situation he did not expect to be asked to stop and pay again.

Screenshot from Beijing News

“I’ve never before heard of an ambulance having to pay a toll,” said the driver angrily. He also filmed the operator, and commented that she should be blamed if something was to happen to the patient as a consequence of this delay.

Mr. Hou, a staff member from the operational department of Hebei Xing Lin expressway development company, later told Beijing News that the van was not in the "free-of-charge" category.

Screenshot from Beijing News

“We see a number of ambulances go through the highway tolls,” Mr. Hou said, suggesting that it is nothing out of the ordinary and that other vans have paid without any problems.

This is not the first time something like this has happened in China. On December 2016, a hospital in Leshan City, in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, sent an ambulance to collect a patient who was severely injured from a car accident in a rural district.

Photo from CNR

On its way back to the hospital, the vehicle was stopped at a toll station for 24 minutes when the driver refused to pay the 12-yuan fee. It was allowed through the toll only after the patient's family members, no longer being able to waste time, paid the balance.

While some netizens blame the driver for putting a life at risk, others have called for state regulation on the issue.

Photo from VCG

According to local regulations in Guangdong Province, Heilongjiang Province and Beijing, an ambulance does not have to pay in an emergency. But in most other provinces in China, they are expected to pay.

An expert says the problem is not about it being “free of charge," but rather about an ambulance being prevented from passing through a toll station quickly in an emergency. An Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) System may provide a solution.