Sending out a car with one person in it to make life-or-death decisions will never work. It's obvious to the meanest intelligence (i.e. mine) that all the one person will ever do if there's the slightest shade of doubt is push the decision over to someone else. Then even more people and vehicles will have orbited around the patient than they do now. Meanwhile, there are fewer ambulances because some dingdong decided they wouldn't be needed. Who thinks of this claptrap? I'm not sure general education has to take a generation. Besides public service announcements at peak ad-watching times, I wonder if some of the hit TV shows wouldn't be willing to help if outreach people in the ambulance service spoke to them. East Enders, and ER and all the rest of them do "SEND AN AMBULANCE NO-O-WWW!" because it makes for a gripping story, but surely if they could get it through their thick noggins that they could save lives by incorporating something more useful, they'd be willing to do it. It wouldn't have to be any less gripping, any more than it is in real life. I also think Maverick is onto something with his or her suggestion about having an intermediate service to call. Misdiagnosis then is not newsworthy or sue-worthy, and the responder can still call an ambulance if need be. It should work better than NHS Misdirect because they wouldn't be in a position to misdirect; they'd just be sending out a car rather than the full ambulance. By the way, to the person above who said education wouldn't reach all the tourists and drunks. That doesn't matter. You're trying to reduce the amount of nonsense. It can never be eliminated.