Yorkshire Air Ambulance urges residents to 'stay safe' this bank holiday

Over the last four years, the charity has responded to 148 incidents on UK bank holidays across Easter, spring bank and Christmas.

There has been almost a 10 per cent increase incidents since 2018.

In 2018, Yorkshire Air Ambulance responded to 33 incidents, followed by 40 in 2019 and 41 in 2020. Bank holiday related incidents dipped slightly to 34 in 2021.

Despite being in the midst of a pandemic and one bank holiday weekend under lockdown rules, 2020 was the busiest year between 2018 and 2021 for bank holiday call outs.

Paul Holmes, Clinical Operations Manager at Yorkshire Air Ambulance, said: “Bank holidays are a busy time not only for ourselves, but many emergency services as more people are out and about across the UK enjoying themselves and not always thinking about the necessary precautions. While we want people to enjoy their summer, we would also like to urge everyone to remain safe and be aware of common hazards that these busy time periods may bring.”

The most common bank holiday incidents are road traffic collisions and motorcycle incidents, of which within the last four years there have been 18, followed closely by falls and equestrian incidents. In 2020, the most common incident type was cycling.

Men were involved in nearly three times more incidents than women (52 vs 19) and the most common patient ages were between 40 – 65 years old.

This Easter saw the charity respond to a total of 21 incidents across the region, including serious incidents across some of Yorkshire’s motorways.

Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity which needs to raise £12,000 every single day to keep both of Yorkshire’s air ambulances in the air and maintained.

It provides a lifesaving rapid response emergency service to 5 million people across 4 million acres of Yorkshire.

To find out more about the work of the YAA and how you can help support them, please visit: www.yaa.org.uk