On a sunny spring day in 2013, a pack of road cyclists was cruising toward the finish line of a 150-mile ride in Austin, Texas when suddenly, a man and his bike skittered, shuddered and slid across the ground. The cyclists scattered like startled birds, and five police officers sprinted to the scene. It was cardiac arrest. One officer started compressions while another radioed for EMS. In less than a minute, a gleaming BMW 650 roared up. An Austin-Travis County EMS (ATCEMS) motorcycle medic dismounted the motorcycle, attached AED pads and delivered shocks. The ambulance arrived, rushed the patient to the hospital and the outcome was good. “We’re thrilled,” says ATCEMS Commander Wesley Hopkins, “because those motor medics have stopped the clock on cardiac arrest at three special events so far, and they made a real difference in the outcome of two others.” Special events are where they really come into play. “When you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people crowded down around Sixth Street or a special event, it’s really hard for an ambulance to get through,” Hopkins says.

“But people don’t have to move as far for the motorcycles—they can move faster and safer through crowds since they’re much more maneuverable.” Special events are plentiful in Austin and motor medics have made saves at South-by-Southwest, Austin City Limits Fest, the Austin Marathon and others. They beta-tested the program with four motor medics in 2012 and quickly discovered that in rush-hour traffic, motor medics staged on I-35 cut response times by an average of five minutes. They were able to get on scene quickly, assess patients and cancel ambulances.   ATCEMS Motor Instructor Randy Vickery recalls an incident in 2013 where a southbound semi jack-knifed and the load crashed into the northbound lanes. “It shut down I-35 all through Austin and 20 miles north and south of us. My motor medic partner and I were literally the only vehicles that could move, so I took northbound and he took southbound. We worked collisions since the ambulance would’ve had a really tough time getting through the choke points.

The bigger picture is that 50% of our calls are non-transports, so motorcycles could be responding to those since we carry everything that’s on the truck except for a monitor.” Another bonus is the off-road capability of the BMW 650. Hopkins recalls, “In 2012, a call came in as ‘overdose on the trail,’ so the motor medics rode down the trail. The patient was unresponsive but had an insulin pump, so the motor medics gave him D50, woke him up and found out he hadn’t eaten, so they got him some food and he didn’t need transport.” Is it really safe for medics to respond on motorcycles, given that the accident rate is high for bikes? Hopkins explains, “We’re adamant about safety. The quickest way for one of our motor medics to get fired is to move a motorcycle even a few feet without full protective gear: boots, pants, long-sleeved shirt and helmet. Our policy is ‘all gear, all the time.’ We send them to the same training school law enforcement uses, and we run them through retraining and testing quarterly.

We often get police officers asking, ‘Hey, did you used to be a cop, because you ride as well as we do!” However, ATCEMS doesn’t have the only motor medics in town; there is a volunteer counterpart, Motorcycle Special Events Team (MSET). MSET is a certified first responder group that was started by Jerry Henry, Dan Oglevie and Mike Sunderman in 1999. MSET provides EMS for special events in and around Austin. Their communications are made via ham radio through headsets in their helmets.fastest motorcycle in gta 5 location Unlike ATCEMS—which takes paramedics who are daily motorcycle riders and teaches them to respond on motorcycles—MSET was formed by riders who saw a need for medical training.  motorcycle dealer andover njHenry says, “We used to ride with a Houston group as course monitors for bicycle rides and runs, and we kept finding ourselves out in the middle of nowhere with injured folks, and we’d have to wait 30 to 45 minutes for an ambulance. suzuki motorcycle parts cornwall

So we got trained as ECAs, and later as EMTs.  When the Houston group broke up, we started MSET in Austin.”MSET found its niche working EMS for the beer-soaked, brawling, bloody Republic of Texas Biker Rally (ROT). “We saw lots of everything working ROT,” recalls Henry. “Fights, knifings, overdoses, cardiac arrest, medicals, heat-related illness, falling off bikes… we had one guy run his bike into the crowd and we had to have five people transported.”bmw motorcycle 1000rr for sale The future looks bright for motor medics as the population density of Austin and other cities continues to increase, and agencies look for response solutions that are faster, more maneuverable and more cost-effective than trucks.motorcycle repair in harrisburg pa Tam Thompson, BS, MEd, NREMT-B is an EMT-Basic with Blanco EMS and Guardian EMS, a motorcycle medic with MSET and an AEMT/paramedic student at EMTS Academy in Round Rock, Texas. california dmv sales tax used car private party

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