I work in a rural area, and do get annoyed by the maternataxi jobs that I get sent to. As some people have said it's not the jobs where things have happened a bit quickly or the patient is worried something is not quite right, it's the ones who are blatently using 999 because they haven't made any effort to arrange anything else - after all they've had nine months to plan! My average journey to hospital is around 15 miles, and often I'm on the only ambulance in the town, so including on scene time that will usually take the ambulance away from base for about an hour and a half. If anything else happens in town in that time the next nearest ambulance station is 15 miles away next to the hospital. Justifiable for a genuine job, but not when the patient doesn't appear to have a single contraction all the way to hospital. I've actually seen midwives tell people off for calling 999 when they arrive at the delivery ward, and been told that when the patient phoned they said they were getting a lift in...well I suppose they were sort of. Interestingly none of my pregnant colleagues in the ambulance service ever call 999 when it's time - they do everything they can to avoid that!