CAMPAIGN: Wiltshire Ambulance Control needs the public's help in assessing road traffic accidents. TREVOR PORTER reports.

Answer 15 questions on a popular TV programme and you could be a millionaire.

But when you dial 999 to request an ambulance after a road traffic accident, you are asked six questions which could save a person's life.

Wiltshire Ambulance Control, which deals with more than 160 calls a day, needs answers to those vital questions to help them assess the situation and determine how they will respond.

Control supervisor Lyn Hooke said the response to the questions from the public was very varied.

She said: "Sometimes our controllers are told 'we just want an ambulance, we don't want to answer all these questions'."

"What the public must realise is that their answers provide us with vital information. What they don't know is that when we are asking them, we have already tasked an ambulance to attend, and possibly need these answers to task other emergency units."

The questions which staff at ambulance control ask are:

1 Is anyone trapped?;

2 Was anyone thrown from the vehicle?;

3 Is he/she alert (able to talk)?;

4 Is he/she breathing normally?;

5 What kind of injuries does he/she have?;

6 Are there chemicals or hazardous materials involved, and if so, is there a symbol number that can identify the chemical?

Thankfully, calls to road traffic accidents are only a small proportion of emergency calls, but in all cases, the most critical factor is the location

Mike Love, emergency medical services officer, said: "Often when we ask where the ambulance is required there is a short pause. People don't always know where they are. Obviously the location is most important if they don't know then we can't tell our crews where to go.

"If it is a back road, pointers can include whether it is near a pub or a phone box.

"Motorways are a problem as motorists often aren't sure exactly where they are."

With mobile phones now carried by a large percentage of motorists, ambulance control often receives numerous calls on the same major crash on a busy road.

Controller Glynn Trowbridge said: "In the case of a serious road accident, we could take up to 30 calls from people on mobile phones, and what they need to realise is that once our switchboards are full, the calls get transferred to adjoining counties so the person ringing in might speak to a control in a county miles from Wiltshire."

But if you have to make that 999 call, whoever you speak to, remember to answer those six questions fully it could save a life.