The miserable traffic conditions in busy urban areas have become a major issue in emergency response. The crisis has motivated a number of foreign and domestic fire and emergency agencies to think outside the box in terms of moving firefighters and ems personnel to the scene. One result is that motorcycles are becoming a popular alternative for urban first responders.

Doctors in Daytona Beach, Fla., have been using motorcycles to speed to the scene of medical traumas for over five years. Now the use of motorcycles has begun to spring up among firefighters and paramedics.

Response of emergency vehicles in some areas of São Paulo, Brazil, for instance, can be 12 to 15 minutes. Using a pair of motorcycles, however, the fire service in the same area has found the response time reduced to five minutes. The São Paulo Fire Department, which serves a population of 10 million, equips the compartments on their 400cc motorcycles with basic ems equipment and a few accessories, including tools, signaling devices, flashlights and elevator keys.

In Japan, firefighters use two types of smaller 200cc motorcycle units called Quick Attackers to respond to emergencies through Tokyo traffic sometimes so dense that ambulances and fire apparatus become stalled for precious minutes at a time. One, the Type T, is equipped with an impulse portable fire extinguishing system. The Type U units are loaded with simple rescue equipment and fire extinguishers. Both units are built to provide quick firefighting, rescue, medical first aid treatment and fact-finding at fires, earthquakes and other disaster scenes.

Fire and emergency agencies in crowded, condensed U.S. cities like New York also are beginning to use alternate vehicles such as bicycles, atvs and electric carts for ems response.

It comes as no surprise that carts and cycles are limited in the amount of equipment they can carry in their saddlebags or in backpacks strapped to responders. Nevertheless, there are clear advantages found in having trained firefighters and ems personnel on the scene as quickly as possible to suppress fires using existing building extinguishers or hoses, attend to medical emergencies, or to reconnoiter the scene and direct additional resources as needed.