Imagine this. You are the parent receiving that call. Your child the one being transported to help, to safety, to care, when suddenly the script flips. The vehicle meant to be a sanctuary becomes a site of unimaginable horror. The details still emerging about the 18 year old who died after stepping out of an ambulance on the M5 motorway are the kind that make you grip your steering wheel a little tighter next time you pass those fluorescent stripes on the highway.

Let us be clear. This is not a finger pointing exercise. Not at the paramedics who undoubtedly fought to save a life while risking their own on that dark road. Not at the police officers arriving to find their worst fears realized. But when a system built entirely around preservation fails so catastrophically, we owe it to the grieving to ask uncomfortable questions we would normally bury beneath bureaucratic jargon.

The facts as reported are brutal in their simplicity. An ambulance stopped, possibly following protocol, possibly despite it. A young man exited. A car struck him. A family’s universe collapsed. Emergency crews reportedly attempted intervention, their high vis jackets glowing like fireflies against the asphalt. But the real blaze here? The invisible one. The slow burn of underfunded services, overstretched responders, and protocols written by administrators who have never had to physically restrain someone in the throes of crisis while traffic barrels past at 70 miles per hour.

I once watched a paramedic friend make a peanut butter sandwich at 3am after a difficult shift. They stood at the counter methodically spreading the jam, hands steady until suddenly they weren’t. The plate shattered. They slid to the floor sobbing. Emergency workers aren't action heroes. They are people who see us at our most broken and still show up. Which makes wondering whether something could have prevented this tragedy not disrespectful to their efforts, but it turns out the only way we might protect them from future anguish.

I spoke to a retired ambulance driver off the record, and what they shared chilled me. We train for accidents outside vehicles. For delivering babies in traffic jams. For violent patients. But the idea that someone would leave a moving medical unit felt both statistically improbable and quietly inevitable. And now everything changes. Now every crew will wonder, glancing at those back doors, if the unthinkable has become thinkable.

But let us talk about the living wreckage. The family who cannot turn off the horror film playing behind their eyelids. The car driver who will forever question whether a fraction slower braking might have altered fate. The responders who will carry this night in their bones like shrapnel. There is no F5 Key for trauma. No policy document that heals survivor’s guilt. We arm our emergency services with defibrillators and tourniquets but often leave their psyche’s bleeding out in the staff room with stale biscuits for company.

This is the hypocrisy that keeps me up. The shiny pamphlets about mental health support that crumple into dust when shift schedules demand overtime. The politicians who applaud our medical workers then quietly cut funding to transport services. The way we call them heroes precisely when we plan to give them nothing but applause.

And yet. On the night in question, those same responders did something extraordinary. According to early reports, they put themselves directly in harm’s way, to shield the young man and warn traffic. In other words, when the system failed, human beings tried to become the system. If that doesn’t deserve both our awe and our apology, I’m not sure what does.

Perhaps the question isn’t why this happened, but why we are surprised it doesn’t happen more often. How many near misses have occurred on rain slicked roads? How many restrained patients have pulled at straps while their demons screamed louder than sirens? How many overworked crews have driven longer than advisable because there simply weren’t enough ambulances upstream? A doctor friend once compared modern emergency medicine to building airplanes while flying them. Cruelly, sometimes we forget the flying part until the ground rushes up.

So what now. Investigations will investigate. Reports will report. Wording will be tightened. Training modules updated. Ministers might make solemn statements about lessons learned. All of it necessary. None of it sufficient. Because fixing this requires something harder than policy tweaks.

It requires admitting that desperation doesn’t follow protocols. That crisis laughs at five year plans. That our societal obsession with avoiding blame actively prevents us from preventing disasters. What if we created systems where ambulance crews could voice concerns about vehicle safety without reprisal? Where patients exhibiting distress during transport got psychological intervention, not just physical restraints? Where traffic management tech could instantly alert drivers miles before an incident?

A colleague recently told me about monitoring equipment used in psychiatric facilities that alerts staff when a patient leaves a designated area. Not to imprison, but to protect. Could similar technology gently notify crews if a back door opens unexpectedly? Would that be an unacceptable imposition or the most basic kind of care?

But technology costs money. And empathy doesn’t balance spreadsheets. So we revert. We make Facebook posts demanding justice that seldom materializes. We donate to funeral funds. We rage at nameless officials. All valid. All vital catharsis. None excusing the real work of plugging the holes through which another family might fall.

Here is what I struggle with most. That in our collective memory, this bright, particular life becomes just data. Another statistic in the annual ‘patient incidents during transport’ column. Another cautionary tale that made the news cycle between celebrity breakups and political scandals. This cannot stand. We must resist the magnetic pull of normalizing tragedy.

So I propose this small act of rebellion. Whenever you pass an ambulance, instead of just moving aside, think specifically of the people inside. The paramedic gripping the wheel. The patient fighting panic. The family praying at the other end. See them not as background characters in your commute, but as protagonists in a story that teeters constantly between salvation and catastrophe.

Perhaps then, when the next policy meeting happens about ambulance safety measures, our collective attention might linger long enough to ask the uncomfortable questions. And maybe, just maybe, another mother won’t have to identify her child via blurred CCTV footage of a motorway nightmare.

Because failure has many parents, but prevention only has one us.