THE mother of a chef who died after crashing his scooter has described the ambulance response times as "unacceptable" after it took 22 minutes for medics to arrive at the scene.
Now it can be revealed that paramedics were forced to travel from Cupar in Fife because no ambulances were available in Dundee or Angus.
Scott Cunningham, 31, was riding home to Dundee from work in Fife when he collided with a parked car.
The Scottish Ambulance Service received an emergency call at 8.45pm on Friday, June 7. However, paramedics did not reach the scene until 9.07pm.
He was taken to Dundee's Ninewells Hospital but later died from internal injuries.
Linda Young, 50, received a phone call from her son after the crash, when he said he was fine.
Yesterday, she described the response time as "unacceptable". She said: "I'm not happy about it at all.
"The police then phoned and said he was OK but they were taking him to be checked.
"The next call I got was to say that he had died.
"The woman who was with him at the time said that the ambulance had taken a long time.
"That is too long to wait. They might have been able to save Scott's life if they were there quicker."
A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said: "We received a 999 call at 8.45pm to respond to a patient who had come off his motorcycle and was described as conscious and alert.
"At that time there was unusually high demand in Tayside and all our crews in Dundee and the surrounding area were busy responding to incidents."
Why are you making commenting on HeraldScotland only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereCommments are closed on this article