Ambulance response times are critical for very sick patients and people severely hurt in accidents. Response time to fatal crashes is not a perfect proxy for the time period per state. However, response times are extremely different state by state, and information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System is telling. Reaction time to COVID-19 patients can be the difference between life and death in some cases, almost certainly.

The Auto Insurance Center’s national average for ambulance responses to fatal crashes is 15 minutes, 19 seconds. Wyoming has the worst figure at 35 minutes, 44 seconds. The second worst is Vermont at 22 minutes, 56 seconds, followed by Montana at 22 minutes, 35 seconds. Fourth and fifth are North Dakota at 21 minutes, 30 seconds, and Kansas at 21 minutes, 22 seconds. Clearly living in rural or semi-rural states with few or no big cities is a disadvantage.

The state with the best response times by the same measure is Illinois at 6 minutes even. Likely this is influenced by Chicago, the country’s third-largest city by population, and one that is densely populated. Second on the list is California at 6 minutes, 52 seconds. Its population is also dominated by large cities, in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco. Rhode Island is third, with a response time of 7 minutes, 4 seconds. Much of the population is concentrated in Providence. Connecticut is fourth, with a response time of 7 minutes, 54 seconds, while in fifth is Massachusetts at 8 minutes and 33 seconds.

It will be some time before ambulance response times for COVID-19 patients are collected and analyzed. At that point, the effect of response times on patients will be precise. In the meantime, more general data points to states where people are worse and better off.

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