A MedStar ambulance was hit Sunday while the crew was responding to an emergency.
MedStar says the ambulance crew was driving through an intersection Sunday afternoon and was side-swiped by another car.
"Please pay attention, specifically at intersections, if there may be emergency vehicles coming because it could end in disaster if you can't see or hear that emergency vehicle coming through the intersection," says MedStar's Matt Zavadsky.
The ambulance was not carrying a patient, and Zavadsky says no one on the crew or in the other car was injured. But he says across the country, 168 people were killed in 2018 in crashes involving police, fire or paramedics.
"One of the most risky things first responders do is to drive lights and sirens to emergency calls," Zavadsky says. "If you think about law enforcement, they have all sorts of hazardous scenes, but still, more police officers are killed in car crashes than anything else. Same with firefighters, same with EMS workers."
The average rate of crashes is 4.6 per 100,000 responses for ambulances driving without lights and sirens across the country and 5.5 per 100,000 for ambulances that are driving with lights and sirens.
Zavadsky says the average crash rate for MedStar is 3.0 per 100,000 responses. He says the lower rate is part of a "triage" system used by dispatchers. MedStar says paramedics respond to 31 percent of calls without lights and sirens.
In addition, he says ambulances will turn off their lights and sirens as they approach intersections and slow down or stop to ensure the intersection is clear before entering.
"That's really our goal is to cause no further harm. If an ambulance responding to your medical call crashes, then there's a delay getting to you," Zavadsky says. "So, we do everything we can, like most EMS agencies do across the country, to make sure we get to your scene safely."
He says other common causes for crashes involve people who pull over for ambulances or pull back into traffic without looking for other cars. Zavadsky says there are three "wake effect" crashes for each crash involving a first responder.