If you ever, heaven forbid, get injured in a traffic collision while riding your bike in Fort Collins, Colorado, at least you won’t have to leave your bicycle behind.
Bike rack on ambulance, from promotional video
That’s because a hospital in the platinum-level bicycle-friendly community has equipped 14 ambulances with front-mounted bicycle racks.
Steve Main, director of emergency medical services for Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, told the Coloradoan:
“… (The bike-rack equipped ambulance) is eliminating some of the concerns that our patients had in the past when they were like, ‘I’m not going to the hospital if I have to leave my bike here.'”
“When you have a $3,000 or $4,000 bike, even though the wheel is out of round or the handle bars are bent you have real concerns about abandoning it on scene.”
It gives the patients “peace of mind.”
The University of Colorado Health hospitals in Fort Collins and Loveland began installing the bike racks over the summer. Use fluctuates with the season: once or twice a day in the winter and three or four time a day in the summer.
Ambulance personnel used to lock up the bikes at the scene of the incident, then go back and help retrieve them. With the racks, it only takes a few second to hang the bike, and the bikes are at the hospital when the patient is released.
The bike racks cost about $350 each to buy and install.
It’s too bad that Fort Collins has so many cyclists injured in crashes, but it’s good to see them see that they and their bikes are well taken care of.
1 comments
Bicycle racks is a lot helpful specially in the city. And its much easier to hang bikes, Thanks for the great post.