Definitely this was probably "fun" for the driver. But I do suspect something wasn't above board here. I know it was mentioned in the article, but the choice to not use a helicopter was... putting a lot of people at unnecessary risk. Which is pretty stupid since you're trying to save someone's life.
Hopefully someone does this with a copter in the future.
> it's the police and everyone in front will move far away
I’ve found in Europe (Germany, France, Croatia and Slovenia), drivers stay to the right unless passing. So the fast lanes will be fairly empty.
Contract that with US/Canada where cars will merge from the on-ramp, switch 3 lanes to the left and camp in the fast lane at the speed limit. All without anything in front of them to warrant such action.
American driving is nothing compared to Italian driving. It’s a complete mess. The very first time I went to Italy, my cab driver got into an accident before we ever even left the airport. He was trying to do a crazy maneuver to avoid a fee and rear-ended another cab driver who was doing the same thing, but who apparently wasn’t doing it fast enough. They got out of their cars, yelled at each other for 15 seconds, then continued on their way.
Night is hardly a good moment for a highspeed race. Very poor visibility (extremely easy to outrun car's lights), but even if a race happens on a nicely lit highway, there's no protection from wild life that are more common in night time.
At night every moving object on a high speed highway has lights that make them more visible, wild life is fenced off the road and there are just a few vehicles. Bonus points: no trucks at night.
I see you never went 200+ km/h at night. The reality: It becomes impossible to recognize whether it's a car or a truck or a bike or nothing above 200. I regularly drive 260 on the autobahn like many people do, but evening is the slow-down moment for most of us. The risk of wildlife is extreme at these speeds, too, fencing does not exist and/or has holes. Trucks drive at night a lot, and you can't see the properly at night; at these speeds, trucks that are side by side can appear like one being behind the another - very scary experience when you realize the reality (usually only ~30 meters behind).
At 220 there isn't much you can do if something shows up at the limit of your beams or if somebody decides to change lanes at a wrong moment.
You are effectively giving away your life to the clueless people driving in front of you and also to the fact there is absolutely nothing obstructing the road.
That's my guess as well. A PR firm was hired and they came up with this idea. It's pretty much an ad for the police and lamborghini. The question is who paid for it.
It's like the jump from the space a few years ago sponsored by redbull. Or the bazillion "dog reacts to returning soldier" videos you see all over social media.
I wonder what would be the maximum distance where a Lamborghini is actually faster than a helicopter (assuming there's almost no traffic e.g. at night).
Does that the time that it takes to prepare a helicopter and a pilot? Because that's probably the slowest part.
I've been on a helicopter ride once and it took quite a while before we were actually in the air. A lot of the time was spent on all of the pre-flight stuff and refueling. And that was in a scenario where a pilot was waiting for us at the airfield. I have no idea if the police in Italy always have a pilot ready to hop in at a moment's notice.
I don't think that would be a concern here - donor organs don't just suddenly show up at the blink of an eye, they need to be carefully extracted and prepped in an operating room. There's certainly enough time to prep a helicopter crew, if there isn't any on standby.
That said, at least in Germany and the surrounding countries, there's a fairly dense network of rescue helicopters which are usually ready on the pad, crew on standby. They're supposed to be airborne within minutes.
If this was a concern other fast-response helicopter services wouldn’t work. As well as the common helicopter air ambulance services used in many countries, helicopters are used on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to drop lifeguards next to people who’re in trouble in the sea. Given someone in that situation could be dead in 3 minutes it’s clear that getting a helicopter off the ground in time is feasible. (I don’t know for sure but I doubt they have a crew sitting in the helicopter with the engine running 24/7, just waiting for a call.)
And as others have noted, the need to transport organs isn’t something that appears out of the blue — there’s at least some lead time available.
Sure, but I would also like to consider the prep time + starting and landing. So lets assume, you call an helicopter pilot and a lambo driver at night up out of their bed, both lets say 20 km far away, in the middle of the night. For this distance I would bet that the lambo driver would be faster.
I read the question wrong, minimum, not maximum. So the minimum is whatever the distance Lambo covers in 20 seconds, as thats the time it takes to accelerate past EC145 top speed of 167 mph. Max would depend on road availability and refueling speed.
The helicopter can fly in a straight line, the car must follow roads. The helicopter has no traffic to slow down for, no turns, and a relatively low risk of accidents.
27 miles in 30 minutes into and through Central London (they drive past Buckingham Palace) on a Friday afternoon to deliver a liver for transplant.
As for why they used cars- at the time London had no helicopter ambulance service, and the police helicopters were grounded for investigation following a crash two days previously. The box with the liver wouldn't have fit on the back of a police motorcycle.
The open roof allowed officers to stand up in the car and direct traffic, while the rear-mounted air-cooled engine meant the car could reverse along the hard shoulder for long distances- they also fitted a rear-facing siren.
Allegedly it was official policy that only officers who were married with children were allowed to drive the Porsches, as it was thought that they would be more careful.
Nice story but it didn't take 2 hours. The italian media, reported that the trip took at least 3 hours making it a bit more reasonable. It's not possible to drive on an Italian Autostrada at the average speed claimed in the article without endangering the lives of the drivers as well as of all the other vehicles.
How is it possible to maintain an average speed that high on public roads? Even if you had lights on, you’d come up on people so quickly they wouldn’t be able to get over fast enough. And surely they had to stop for fuel at least once unless they have some special gas tanks fitted? Seems difficult
On highways in Europe it is illegal to pass on the right, meaning that the fastest-going vehicles are supposed to be in the leftmost lane. On top of that you're supposed to switch back into the right-hand lanes if they're empty.
Taken together this means that you can generally go pretty fast in the leftmost lane.
After moving to the USA from Europe I was quite shocked at the free-for-all on American freeways. The European model is followed very well in Switzerland, and it's extremely pleasant and practical to have the ability to cleanly overtake, overall reducing traffic and allowing different vehicles to go at their optimal speed without being stuck behind the lowest common denominators (trucks, busses, etc. clogging everything up)
I would invite the downvoters to try driving in southern France at their next opportunity. People pass on the right, drive slowly in the middle lane and tailgate dangerously in the left lane.
Then you also have the special letter of the law crazies who zig zag every minute across multiple lanes to pass people in the middle.
You are wrong. In the U.K., which drives on the left and is in Europe, it is not expressly forbidden to undertake (pass on the left) anywhere, including motorways. This is independent from the legal requirement to remain in the left-most lane if possible.
On designated one-way streets, and thus not on motorways, passing on either side is expressly allowed. Of course, reckless undertaking at high relative speed on the motorway may be interpreted as illegal under other more widely encompassing laws.
Because most of the time, when you're driving already 150 km/h (= 20 km/h over the limit), there will be an asshole that comes at 180 km/h and that will headlight you until you move.
I imagine there's some exaggeration here, but someone drove across the US in 25 hours averaging 110 MPH [1]. Given that, 143MPH for 2 hours doesn't seem that crazy.
The actual average driving speed was even higher, the car must have refueled at least once ( no way they get a reach of 460km at that speed with one filling) and also the non highway parts of start/end drag the average down quickly. My guess is at +280kmh (175mph) driving speed most of the time on the highway to make up for that.
In times of covid and partial lockdowns it's not unusual to have empty highways (depending on the time window this happened). In germany you can definitely average 230km/h (140mph) when the Autobahn is empty, eg. at night. Conditions need to be perfect though (almost no traffic, weather, powerful car and a fit driver). Maybe they changed seats after refilling.
This seems like a reasonable estimate. I’ve done fairly long sections on the Autobahn at 230-250km/h, and this was in a slower car (Audi A6), without a siren, and without a kidney to deliver.
Even when going “just” 200-220 I often get passed by cars that are going much faster. With three lanes this is not a problem.
Huum. I'm italian and no, does't work that way anymore. Maybe 20 years ago. Now aside from Autovelox for instant speed readings, they even have checkpoints and they average your speed. So yes, you can go superfast between two checkpoints but then you have to stop to lower your average speed before passing the next checkpoint. They call the system "Tutor". you can see the list of checkpoints here: http://www.autostrade.it/documents/10279/13188512/TUTOR_2016... and there are plenty of said checkpoints on the path took by the police car.
>How is it possible to maintain an average speed that high on public roads?
It's national highways (kinda like "interstates") from Padua to Rome (something like Portland, Maine to New York), not some city roads.
Unlike in the US, in some European countries like Italy and Germany you have very high or unlimited (Autobahn) speed limits, and roads good enough to maintain them.
Even if it was running at something like 12mpg it would have made it on a single tank, and it was probably running at something like 15.
If they were closing the roads ahead, or if the driver was like a racecar driver it's totally doable with a bit of luck. If they did both it's even like, reproducible.
I doubt that, the official mileage for that car is 16.7mpg only (and this is measured with much lower speeds). Going at 150+mph consumes a lot more gas, probably ending below 10mpg.
They probably had to refill halfway in between.
Edit: the Huracan seems to have a 90L gas tank, divided by 480km they must not have exceeded 18.75L/100km in one go (= 17.33mpg). I.e. they must have refueled at least once, if not twice
> Even if you had lights on, you’d come up on people so quickly they wouldn’t be able to get over fast enough.
You're going to have a bad time on the Autobahn if you think like that (which is not in Italy, sure, but "highway" etiquette should apply to both cases)
Assuming this is real, it is absolutely reckless and just not needed for kidneys. They can stay on ice for 24 hours or longer. Nobody ever needed an emergency kidney transplant, thanks to dialysis. Even if a helipad wasn’t on the hospital any clearing would do. And if the weather was too poor you use an ambulance or special transport going at a safer speed, which would still get there with time to spare.
Well, how can I say this? Welcome to Italy, my friend. The country that gave the world Leonardo and Galileo and Michelangelo, and the country where these things happen, where a police force has a few Lamborghinis (I was overtaken by one, nearby Rome, ~15 years ago) that regularly travel well above 100mph even if it's not necessary, whose cost would cover several "normal" police cars. And a country where sometimes when there is a problem and an "Italian-style" solution, that solution is implemented. Helicopters? Kidneys can stay in ice for several hours? Who cares, the police transported a kidney at 250 km/h, and proudly tweeted about it.
I'm Italian; I am fully authorized to make some fun of my own country. But, before you say "absolutely reckless", you should know that the "autostrada" between Padova and Roma is very well built, and that the policemen driving the Lambo are really good drivers. A bit reckless? Maybe. There's worse in the world.
I love visiting Italy, and it's great to visit a country where the drivers—and everyone—have attitude.
However, when you come from a nanny state with Namby-pamby road rules like I do, it takes a bit of getting used to driving in Italy. The last time I had to drive from Genoa to Rome I was overtaken so often I thought I'd be better off with a low-flying jet despite driving at about as fast as my cheap rental car would go!
Mind you, that spirit it doesn't always bode well for the locals. Once in Firenze at a 90° T intersection with the road that follows the bank of the Arno, I saw that the traffic lights were out and stuck on red, so traffic couldn't veer off down the intersecting road.
Not to be outdone, mopeds and small cars just mounted the sidewalk and bypassed the red lights altogether (by going down the sidewalk they technically weren't going though the red lights (now where they?). Now, that's good lateral thinking but it would never happen where I come from.
Unfortunately, there was a huge ditch in the sidewalk some 10/15 metres down from the intersection that wasn't easily seen when one turned the corner. The result was that this enormous hole (almost a sinkhole in size) was full of busted mopeds and small cars!
Nevertheless, I give them 10/10 for ingenuity. ;-)
BTW, I saw this news report about the police using a Lamborghini to transport a donor organ on TV last night. There didn't seem anything unusual about the story (for Italy anyway) and Lamborghini had donated the car to police some time back specifically for purposes like that. Seems they did AOK and I hope the patient is doing well.
Did you actually read that article? It supports what I said-- we're talking 16+ hours before studies notice any difference at all, and even that difference is disputed. In fact, here's a quote from the article, "The risk of graft failure was small when CIT was shorter than 36h." Simply put, the difference in CIT between 2 hours and 5 hours isn't outweighed by driving 150mph on a public road for 2 hours.
In Ireland there is a charity called Blood Bikes (http://bloodbikes.ie/) where people volunteer to quickly transport somewhat urgent medical supplies including blood (hence the name), test samples, medication, medical files etc. They don't do organ transport though. I presume that is still generally done by the ambulance service.
For years I had this concept in mind of deploying a fleet of supercars across hospitals around the mid-atlantic as rapid organ shuttles, but quick research made it clear that the idea would probably only be practical in a limited spread of circumstances, more limited than would make sense to justify the service.
Still, if there's a job I'd love to do, it'd probably be this.
I wonder what the stats would be on risk for regular transport. I've often heard that for many "dangerous" jobs, the actual most dangerous part is literally driving to and from the site.
I'm assuming that even without needing to worry about the speed limit, the sheer requirement of needing to deal with other (occasionally very stupid) drivers, high speeds, and environmental considerations (you don't get to pick when someone needs a transplant) would lead to a non-trivial number of crashes/lost organs/dead recipients and/or bystanders for any decently large number of trips. It certainly would be one high stakes line of work...
This is true, though for what it's worth, one of the advantages emergency vehicles have is the sheer variety of tools they can use to get attention - and compel others to create a path forward.
Using a Lamborghini may seem extravagant and unsafe, but it's clearly cheaper and it's not clear to me that it would be any less safe, even at quite high speeds. Helicopters crash quite frequently.
> It’s a pretty solid use of a supercar, although folks on Twitter have wondered why Italian officials didn’t just use a helicopter to transport the kidney. A Google Maps view of the Policlinico Universitario in Padua, the starting hospital, doesn’t seem to show a helipad or an easily accessible flat area nearby, so a Lamborghini likely made the most sense here.
It's nice that they had the Lambo available! But had it not been, there are obviously flat fields likely suitable for helicopter landing nearby (notably a soccer pitch a short walk from the hospital).
Technically depending on traffic and road conditions it’s possible to get there faster in a supercar than a heli. It may however not be the safest option.
This is so unbelievably stupid and highly doubt there is any legitimate reason for police officers to have supercars in their fleets. This is clearly a cross waste of money, is dangerous, and totally pointless. Just use a helicopter and as another poster noted, there's totally fine place a helicopter could land close to the hospital.
The Italian people should be outraged at this profligate (and self serving) waste of resources. Especially in a country that doesn't even have monetary sovereignty.
I wouldn't be so sure, helicopters are insanely expensive. Not just to buy and fuel, but to maintain. They basically need to be completely rebuilt and every part inspected, after a certain number of operating hours. From what I can Google, that number of hours in usually in the low thousands.
why not use a gyrocopter then? It's cheaper, easier to maintain and more safe. Even if they are not that fast you don't have to get stuck in traffic jam, wait on traffic lights in the city and can flight directly with straight line from A to B.
Some countries are toying with the idea of using drones for medical supply delivery. A few are also sending defibrillation drones to heart attack locations. I've not seen anyone use one for organs, but I do not see any technical reason they could not if the failure rate of the drones is lower than human operated equipment. There are probably insurance obstacles to get over. Drones can fly in weather that professional pilots with thousands of hours of IFR experience can not in terms of average failures and the range of said drones is improving exponentially every year.
Cars are dangerous so they should have used a helicopter, helicopters aren't dangerous, also the speeds are a lie, lamborginis can't drive that fast on roads, especially cos you can't pass on the left in Europe. Glad to tap in to hn expertise again this morning.
Hopefully someone does this with a copter in the future.