12 ms·

Italian police use Lamborghini to transport donor kidney 300 miles in two hours

92 points by t23 6y ago

1024core 6y ago
Why not use a copter?
- innocenat 6y ago
  > It’s a pretty solid use of a supercar, although folks on Twitter have wondered why Italian officials didn’t just use a helicopter to transport the kidney. A Google Maps view of the Policlinico Universitario in Padua, the starting hospital, doesn’t seem to show a helipad or an easily accessible flat area nearby, so a Lamborghini likely made the most sense here. It's in the article.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    But it's total BS, there's a giant empty lawn abut 250 feet away to the southeast, at the intersection of Via Gattamelata and Via Alvise Cornaro.
    - Shalle135 6y ago
      Technically depending on traffic and road conditions it’s possible to get there faster in a supercar than a heli. It may however not be the safest option.
  - runako 6y ago
    It's nice that they had the Lambo available! But had it not been, there are obviously flat fields likely suitable for helicopter landing nearby (notably a soccer pitch a short walk from the hospital).
  - 1024core 6y ago
    There's this soccer field, which is about 600ft away from the hospital. https://goo.gl/maps/fVNDsTCvrrArVn5i7 https://goo.gl/maps/fVNDsTCvrrArVn5i7
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      As per the article, that was too far away so a lambo made the most sense. So much ridiculous here.
- m463 6y ago
  I would imagine lamborghini and ferrari contribute to the italian GDP in ways that make this more practical. :)
eganist 6y ago
For years I had this concept in mind of deploying a fleet of supercars across hospitals around the mid-atlantic as rapid organ shuttles, but quick research made it clear that the idea would probably only be practical in a limited spread of circumstances, more limited than would make sense to justify the service. Still, if there's a job I'd love to do, it'd probably be this.
- qchris 6y ago
  I wonder what the stats would be on risk for regular transport. I've often heard that for many "dangerous" jobs, the actual most dangerous part is literally driving to and from the site. I'm assuming that even without needing to worry about the speed limit, the sheer requirement of needing to deal with other (occasionally very stupid) drivers, high speeds, and environmental considerations (you don't get to pick when someone needs a transplant) would lead to a non-trivial number of crashes/lost organs/dead recipients and/or bystanders for any decently large number of trips. It certainly would be one high stakes line of work...
  - greesil 6y ago
    That's certainly an interesting idea to generate more organ donors.
  - eganist 6y ago
    This is true, though for what it's worth, one of the advantages emergency vehicles have is the sheer variety of tools they can use to get attention - and compel others to create a path forward.
dvdbloc 6y ago
How is it possible to maintain an average speed that high on public roads? Even if you had lights on, you’d come up on people so quickly they wouldn’t be able to get over fast enough. And surely they had to stop for fuel at least once unless they have some special gas tanks fitted? Seems difficult
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 6y ago
  >How is it possible to maintain an average speed that high on public roads? It's national highways (kinda like "interstates") from Padua to Rome (something like Portland, Maine to New York), not some city roads. Unlike in the US, in some European countries like Italy and Germany you have very high or unlimited (Autobahn) speed limits, and roads good enough to maintain them.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
    In italy the highest speed is 130,no other road allows you to go faster than that.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      In 90% of the US the highest is 70mph in perfectly fine straight-for-miles interstates. Many are less. In Italy the autostrada legal limit is already higher at 80/130 (and supercar drivers frequently go much over it). And of course this is the police, they can make an exception for themselves :-)
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
        I'm aware, i was just suggesting that there is no highway with no speed limit in Italy
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hugh-avherald 6y ago
Using a Lamborghini may seem extravagant and unsafe, but it's clearly cheaper and it's not clear to me that it would be any less safe, even at quite high speeds. Helicopters crash quite frequently.
smabie 6y ago
This is so unbelievably stupid and highly doubt there is any legitimate reason for police officers to have supercars in their fleets. This is clearly a cross waste of money, is dangerous, and totally pointless. Just use a helicopter and as another poster noted, there's totally fine place a helicopter could land close to the hospital. The Italian people should be outraged at this profligate (and self serving) waste of resources. Especially in a country that doesn't even have monetary sovereignty.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548
- ueiejdjddiiw 6y ago
  Police sometimes use confiscated vehicles as police cars if they can't sell them at an auction.
- rhinoceraptor 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure, helicopters are insanely expensive. Not just to buy and fuel, but to maintain. They basically need to be completely rebuilt and every part inspected, after a certain number of operating hours. From what I can Google, that number of hours in usually in the low thousands.
  - throwaway546456 6y ago
    why not use a gyrocopter then? It's cheaper, easier to maintain and more safe. Even if they are not that fast you don't have to get stuck in traffic jam, wait on traffic lights in the city and can flight directly with straight line from A to B.
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      Some countries are toying with the idea of using drones for medical supply delivery. A few are also sending defibrillation drones to heart attack locations. I've not seen anyone use one for organs, but I do not see any technical reason they could not if the failure rate of the drones is lower than human operated equipment. There are probably insurance obstacles to get over. Drones can fly in weather that professional pilots with thousands of hours of IFR experience can not in terms of average failures and the range of said drones is improving exponentially every year.
rhacker 6y ago
Definitely this was probably "fun" for the driver. But I do suspect something wasn't above board here. I know it was mentioned in the article, but the choice to not use a helicopter was... putting a lot of people at unnecessary risk. Which is pretty stupid since you're trying to save someone's life. Hopefully someone does this with a copter in the future.
- sebow 6y ago
  It probably was more expensive to use an helicopter;Not only that but people over-estimate the "dangers" of a(n european) highway. If you have good acoustics/light signalling you can drive pretty fast and safe with a capable car, so in the case of a lamborghini police car the only "danger" was the human factor of the driver. An error during a helicopter flight is equally if not more dangerous.People also forget this period it is very foggy across all Europe.However I agree a helicopter would have been more appropriate, but maybe some circumstances prevented that.
- tutfbhuf 6y ago
  I wonder what would be the maximum distance where a Lamborghini is actually faster than a helicopter (assuming there's almost no traffic e.g. at night).
  - rasz 6y ago
    For most helicopters its around as far as it takes Lambo to accelerate for 20 seconds.
    - tutfbhuf 6y ago
      Sure, but I would also like to consider the prep time + starting and landing. So lets assume, you call an helicopter pilot and a lambo driver at night up out of their bed, both lets say 20 km far away, in the middle of the night. For this distance I would bet that the lambo driver would be faster.
    - snypher 6y ago
      I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Lambo average speed ~150mph. Eurocopter EC145 cruise speed ~150mph. Even the never-exceed speed of the 145 is ~170mph, which the Lambo should be more than capable of (~200mph). It surely comes down to a matter of fuel capacity and straight-line travel.
speedgoose 6y ago
300 miles is about 480 km.
CapriciousCptl 6y ago
Assuming this is real, it is absolutely reckless and just not needed for kidneys. They can stay on ice for 24 hours or longer. Nobody ever needed an emergency kidney transplant, thanks to dialysis. Even if a helipad wasn’t on the hospital any clearing would do. And if the weather was too poor you use an ambulance or special transport going at a safer speed, which would still get there with time to spare.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Well, how can I say this? Welcome to Italy, my friend. The country that gave the world Leonardo and Galileo and Michelangelo, and the country where these things happen, where a police force has a few Lamborghinis (I was overtaken by one, nearby Rome, ~15 years ago) that regularly travel well above 100mph even if it's not necessary, whose cost would cover several "normal" police cars. And a country where sometimes when there is a problem and an "Italian-style" solution, that solution is implemented. Helicopters? Kidneys can stay in ice for several hours? Who cares, the police transported a kidney at 250 km/h, and proudly tweeted about it. I'm Italian; I am fully authorized to make some fun of my own country. But, before you say "absolutely reckless", you should know that the "autostrada" between Padova and Roma is very well built, and that the policemen driving the Lambo are really good drivers. A bit reckless? Maybe. There's worse in the world.
  - LeCow 6y ago
    Sir, this is the internet police. We will need to see your "full authorization documents" to prove that you're permitted to make fun of Italy. I mean Italy is really easy to make fun of either way, you only have to take a look at the government and history to realise that.
    - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
      Yep :)
  - hilbert42 6y ago
    I love visiting Italy, and it's great to visit a country where the drivers—and everyone—have attitude. However, when you come from a nanny state with Namby-pamby road rules like I do, it takes a bit of getting used to driving in Italy. The last time I had to drive from Genoa to Rome I was overtaken so often I thought I'd be better off with a low-flying jet despite driving at about as fast as my cheap rental car would go! Mind you, that spirit it doesn't always bode well for the locals. Once in Firenze at a 90° T intersection with the road that follows the bank of the Arno, I saw that the traffic lights were out and stuck on red, so traffic couldn't veer off down the intersecting road. Not to be outdone, mopeds and small cars just mounted the sidewalk and bypassed the red lights altogether (by going down the sidewalk they technically weren't going though the red lights (now where they?). Now, that's good lateral thinking but it would never happen where I come from. Unfortunately, there was a huge ditch in the sidewalk some 10/15 metres down from the intersection that wasn't easily seen when one turned the corner. The result was that this enormous hole (almost a sinkhole in size) was full of busted mopeds and small cars! Nevertheless, I give them 10/10 for ingenuity. ;-) BTW, I saw this news report about the police using a Lamborghini to transport a donor organ on TV last night. There didn't seem anything unusual about the story (for Italy anyway) and Lamborghini had donated the car to police some time back specifically for purposes like that. Seems they did AOK and I hope the patient is doing well.
marioletto 6y ago
Nice story but it didn't take 2 hours. The italian media, reported that the trip took at least 3 hours making it a bit more reasonable. It's not possible to drive on an Italian Autostrada at the average speed claimed in the article without endangering the lives of the drivers as well as of all the other vehicles.
discordance 6y ago
This makes me worry about the amount of military gear that's been given to the US police force. Given the tools, they will find a use.
k-l-s 6y ago
Worth mentioning that the car was donated to the police by Lamborghini: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548#:~:text=Lamborghini%20has%20donated%20a%20specially,Italian%20news%20agency%20ANSA%20reports https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548#....
tomcooks 6y ago
Phrases like "In what may be one of the most Italian things that has ever happened" make my blood boil.
jonnypotty 6y ago
Cars are dangerous so they should have used a helicopter, helicopters aren't dangerous, also the speeds are a lie, lamborginis can't drive that fast on roads, especially cos you can't pass on the left in Europe. Glad to tap in to hn expertise again this morning.
Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
While a Rover SD1 3500 isn't a Lamborghini, this video is still worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU 27 miles in 30 minutes into and through Central London (they drive past Buckingham Palace) on a Friday afternoon to deliver a liver for transplant. As for why they used cars- at the time London had no helicopter ambulance service, and the police helicopters were grounded for investigation following a crash two days previously. The box with the liver wouldn't have fit on the back of a police motorcycle.
- dTal 6y ago
  Wow, that was a smashing watch! Historically interesting for 1987 Central London, as well as tense and exciting.
- mrlonglong 6y ago
  Holy fuck I remember this! It was all over the news at the time.
Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
The Dutch police bought Porsche 964 Targas for motorway patrols: https://witmerodijk.nl/CarImages/1681/DSC_2492_703381.jpg https://witmerodijk.nl/CarImages/1681/DSC_2492_703381.jpg The open roof allowed officers to stand up in the car and direct traffic, while the rear-mounted air-cooled engine meant the car could reverse along the hard shoulder for long distances- they also fitted a rear-facing siren. Allegedly it was official policy that only officers who were married with children were allowed to drive the Porsches, as it was thought that they would be more careful.
theBobBob 6y ago
In Ireland there is a charity called Blood Bikes (http://bloodbikes.ie/ http://bloodbikes.ie/) where people volunteer to quickly transport somewhat urgent medical supplies including blood (hence the name), test samples, medication, medical files etc. They don't do organ transport though. I presume that is still generally done by the ambulance service.
guenthert 6y ago
Hey, I donated a kidney and didn't get a ride in a luxury sports car. I feel cheated.

92 points by t23 6y ago

1024core 6y ago

Why not use a copter?

innocenat 6y ago
> It’s a pretty solid use of a supercar, although folks on Twitter have wondered why Italian officials didn’t just use a helicopter to transport the kidney. A Google Maps view of the Policlinico Universitario in Padua, the starting hospital, doesn’t seem to show a helipad or an easily accessible flat area nearby, so a Lamborghini likely made the most sense here. It's in the article.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  But it's total BS, there's a giant empty lawn abut 250 feet away to the southeast, at the intersection of Via Gattamelata and Via Alvise Cornaro.
  - Shalle135 6y ago
    Technically depending on traffic and road conditions it’s possible to get there faster in a supercar than a heli. It may however not be the safest option.
- runako 6y ago
  It's nice that they had the Lambo available! But had it not been, there are obviously flat fields likely suitable for helicopter landing nearby (notably a soccer pitch a short walk from the hospital).
- 1024core 6y ago
  There's this soccer field, which is about 600ft away from the hospital. https://goo.gl/maps/fVNDsTCvrrArVn5i7 https://goo.gl/maps/fVNDsTCvrrArVn5i7
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    As per the article, that was too far away so a lambo made the most sense. So much ridiculous here.
m463 6y ago
I would imagine lamborghini and ferrari contribute to the italian GDP in ways that make this more practical. :)

eganist 6y ago

For years I had this concept in mind of deploying a fleet of supercars across hospitals around the mid-atlantic as rapid organ shuttles, but quick research made it clear that the idea would probably only be practical in a limited spread of circumstances, more limited than would make sense to justify the service. Still, if there's a job I'd love to do, it'd probably be this.

qchris 6y ago
I wonder what the stats would be on risk for regular transport. I've often heard that for many "dangerous" jobs, the actual most dangerous part is literally driving to and from the site. I'm assuming that even without needing to worry about the speed limit, the sheer requirement of needing to deal with other (occasionally very stupid) drivers, high speeds, and environmental considerations (you don't get to pick when someone needs a transplant) would lead to a non-trivial number of crashes/lost organs/dead recipients and/or bystanders for any decently large number of trips. It certainly would be one high stakes line of work...
- greesil 6y ago
  That's certainly an interesting idea to generate more organ donors.
- eganist 6y ago
  This is true, though for what it's worth, one of the advantages emergency vehicles have is the sheer variety of tools they can use to get attention - and compel others to create a path forward.

dvdbloc 6y ago

How is it possible to maintain an average speed that high on public roads? Even if you had lights on, you’d come up on people so quickly they wouldn’t be able to get over fast enough. And surely they had to stop for fuel at least once unless they have some special gas tanks fitted? Seems difficult

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 6y ago
>How is it possible to maintain an average speed that high on public roads? It's national highways (kinda like "interstates") from Padua to Rome (something like Portland, Maine to New York), not some city roads. Unlike in the US, in some European countries like Italy and Germany you have very high or unlimited (Autobahn) speed limits, and roads good enough to maintain them.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
  In italy the highest speed is 130,no other road allows you to go faster than that.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    In 90% of the US the highest is 70mph in perfectly fine straight-for-miles interstates. Many are less. In Italy the autostrada legal limit is already higher at 80/130 (and supercar drivers frequently go much over it). And of course this is the police, they can make an exception for themselves :-)
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
      I'm aware, i was just suggesting that there is no highway with no speed limit in Italy
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hugh-avherald 6y ago

Using a Lamborghini may seem extravagant and unsafe, but it's clearly cheaper and it's not clear to me that it would be any less safe, even at quite high speeds. Helicopters crash quite frequently.

smabie 6y ago

This is so unbelievably stupid and highly doubt there is any legitimate reason for police officers to have supercars in their fleets. This is clearly a cross waste of money, is dangerous, and totally pointless. Just use a helicopter and as another poster noted, there's totally fine place a helicopter could land close to the hospital. The Italian people should be outraged at this profligate (and self serving) waste of resources. Especially in a country that doesn't even have monetary sovereignty.

Hamuko 6y ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548
ueiejdjddiiw 6y ago
Police sometimes use confiscated vehicles as police cars if they can't sell them at an auction.
rhinoceraptor 6y ago
I wouldn't be so sure, helicopters are insanely expensive. Not just to buy and fuel, but to maintain. They basically need to be completely rebuilt and every part inspected, after a certain number of operating hours. From what I can Google, that number of hours in usually in the low thousands.
- throwaway546456 6y ago
  why not use a gyrocopter then? It's cheaper, easier to maintain and more safe. Even if they are not that fast you don't have to get stuck in traffic jam, wait on traffic lights in the city and can flight directly with straight line from A to B.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    Some countries are toying with the idea of using drones for medical supply delivery. A few are also sending defibrillation drones to heart attack locations. I've not seen anyone use one for organs, but I do not see any technical reason they could not if the failure rate of the drones is lower than human operated equipment. There are probably insurance obstacles to get over. Drones can fly in weather that professional pilots with thousands of hours of IFR experience can not in terms of average failures and the range of said drones is improving exponentially every year.

rhacker 6y ago

Definitely this was probably "fun" for the driver. But I do suspect something wasn't above board here. I know it was mentioned in the article, but the choice to not use a helicopter was... putting a lot of people at unnecessary risk. Which is pretty stupid since you're trying to save someone's life. Hopefully someone does this with a copter in the future.

sebow 6y ago
It probably was more expensive to use an helicopter;Not only that but people over-estimate the "dangers" of a(n european) highway. If you have good acoustics/light signalling you can drive pretty fast and safe with a capable car, so in the case of a lamborghini police car the only "danger" was the human factor of the driver. An error during a helicopter flight is equally if not more dangerous.People also forget this period it is very foggy across all Europe.However I agree a helicopter would have been more appropriate, but maybe some circumstances prevented that.
tutfbhuf 6y ago
I wonder what would be the maximum distance where a Lamborghini is actually faster than a helicopter (assuming there's almost no traffic e.g. at night).
- rasz 6y ago
  For most helicopters its around as far as it takes Lambo to accelerate for 20 seconds.
  - tutfbhuf 6y ago
    Sure, but I would also like to consider the prep time + starting and landing. So lets assume, you call an helicopter pilot and a lambo driver at night up out of their bed, both lets say 20 km far away, in the middle of the night. For this distance I would bet that the lambo driver would be faster.
  - snypher 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Lambo average speed ~150mph. Eurocopter EC145 cruise speed ~150mph. Even the never-exceed speed of the 145 is ~170mph, which the Lambo should be more than capable of (~200mph). It surely comes down to a matter of fuel capacity and straight-line travel.

speedgoose 6y ago

300 miles is about 480 km.

CapriciousCptl 6y ago

Assuming this is real, it is absolutely reckless and just not needed for kidneys. They can stay on ice for 24 hours or longer. Nobody ever needed an emergency kidney transplant, thanks to dialysis. Even if a helipad wasn’t on the hospital any clearing would do. And if the weather was too poor you use an ambulance or special transport going at a safer speed, which would still get there with time to spare.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Well, how can I say this? Welcome to Italy, my friend. The country that gave the world Leonardo and Galileo and Michelangelo, and the country where these things happen, where a police force has a few Lamborghinis (I was overtaken by one, nearby Rome, ~15 years ago) that regularly travel well above 100mph even if it's not necessary, whose cost would cover several "normal" police cars. And a country where sometimes when there is a problem and an "Italian-style" solution, that solution is implemented. Helicopters? Kidneys can stay in ice for several hours? Who cares, the police transported a kidney at 250 km/h, and proudly tweeted about it. I'm Italian; I am fully authorized to make some fun of my own country. But, before you say "absolutely reckless", you should know that the "autostrada" between Padova and Roma is very well built, and that the policemen driving the Lambo are really good drivers. A bit reckless? Maybe. There's worse in the world.
- LeCow 6y ago
  Sir, this is the internet police. We will need to see your "full authorization documents" to prove that you're permitted to make fun of Italy. I mean Italy is really easy to make fun of either way, you only have to take a look at the government and history to realise that.
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Yep :)
- hilbert42 6y ago
  I love visiting Italy, and it's great to visit a country where the drivers—and everyone—have attitude. However, when you come from a nanny state with Namby-pamby road rules like I do, it takes a bit of getting used to driving in Italy. The last time I had to drive from Genoa to Rome I was overtaken so often I thought I'd be better off with a low-flying jet despite driving at about as fast as my cheap rental car would go! Mind you, that spirit it doesn't always bode well for the locals. Once in Firenze at a 90° T intersection with the road that follows the bank of the Arno, I saw that the traffic lights were out and stuck on red, so traffic couldn't veer off down the intersecting road. Not to be outdone, mopeds and small cars just mounted the sidewalk and bypassed the red lights altogether (by going down the sidewalk they technically weren't going though the red lights (now where they?). Now, that's good lateral thinking but it would never happen where I come from. Unfortunately, there was a huge ditch in the sidewalk some 10/15 metres down from the intersection that wasn't easily seen when one turned the corner. The result was that this enormous hole (almost a sinkhole in size) was full of busted mopeds and small cars! Nevertheless, I give them 10/10 for ingenuity. ;-) BTW, I saw this news report about the police using a Lamborghini to transport a donor organ on TV last night. There didn't seem anything unusual about the story (for Italy anyway) and Lamborghini had donated the car to police some time back specifically for purposes like that. Seems they did AOK and I hope the patient is doing well.

marioletto 6y ago

Nice story but it didn't take 2 hours. The italian media, reported that the trip took at least 3 hours making it a bit more reasonable. It's not possible to drive on an Italian Autostrada at the average speed claimed in the article without endangering the lives of the drivers as well as of all the other vehicles.

discordance 6y ago

This makes me worry about the amount of military gear that's been given to the US police force. Given the tools, they will find a use.

k-l-s 6y ago

Worth mentioning that the car was donated to the police by Lamborghini: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548#:~:text=Lamborghini%20has%20donated%20a%20specially,Italian%20news%20agency%20ANSA%20reports https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27574548#....

tomcooks 6y ago

Phrases like "In what may be one of the most Italian things that has ever happened" make my blood boil.

jonnypotty 6y ago

Cars are dangerous so they should have used a helicopter, helicopters aren't dangerous, also the speeds are a lie, lamborginis can't drive that fast on roads, especially cos you can't pass on the left in Europe. Glad to tap in to hn expertise again this morning.

Ichthypresbyter 6y ago

While a Rover SD1 3500 isn't a Lamborghini, this video is still worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU 27 miles in 30 minutes into and through Central London (they drive past Buckingham Palace) on a Friday afternoon to deliver a liver for transplant. As for why they used cars- at the time London had no helicopter ambulance service, and the police helicopters were grounded for investigation following a crash two days previously. The box with the liver wouldn't have fit on the back of a police motorcycle.

dTal 6y ago
Wow, that was a smashing watch! Historically interesting for 1987 Central London, as well as tense and exciting.
mrlonglong 6y ago
Holy fuck I remember this! It was all over the news at the time.

Ichthypresbyter 6y ago

The Dutch police bought Porsche 964 Targas for motorway patrols: https://witmerodijk.nl/CarImages/1681/DSC_2492_703381.jpg https://witmerodijk.nl/CarImages/1681/DSC_2492_703381.jpg The open roof allowed officers to stand up in the car and direct traffic, while the rear-mounted air-cooled engine meant the car could reverse along the hard shoulder for long distances- they also fitted a rear-facing siren. Allegedly it was official policy that only officers who were married with children were allowed to drive the Porsches, as it was thought that they would be more careful.

theBobBob 6y ago

In Ireland there is a charity called Blood Bikes (http://bloodbikes.ie/ http://bloodbikes.ie/) where people volunteer to quickly transport somewhat urgent medical supplies including blood (hence the name), test samples, medication, medical files etc. They don't do organ transport though. I presume that is still generally done by the ambulance service.

guenthert 6y ago

Hey, I donated a kidney and didn't get a ride in a luxury sports car. I feel cheated.