Jason Learmonth is a paramedic with a difference. Instead of an ambulance, he gets around town on a motorcycle that's kitted out with almost every piece of clinical equipment an ambulance carries. It's part of a trial that's putting two of these machines on the road in Melbourne, Australia, for three years to discover whether the bike's ability to get into hard-to-reach places and move through congested traffic is useful enough to make it a permanent part of the Ambulance service. I followed Jason around for an afternoon to capture some of his extraordinary working day in pictures.
For the full story click through to the gallery. In the image captions, Jason tells us about his bike, his gear, the role of a motorcycle paramedic and a few cases we attended during the afternoon.
!["A good example of a marina promenade area. It's not exactly designed for a normal vehicle. Ambulances weigh nearly 4 tonnes so they're probably not able to drive across wooden boards."](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/943ee16/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1333+0+0/resize/1440x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2Fmotorcycle-paramedic-ambulance-photo-story-90.jpg)
!["Our lovely lurid watermelon coloured trauma kit... It's pretty much a diagnostic bag. Things to check peoples' temperature, blood pressure, oxygen levels, blood sugar... Stethoscope... Trauma bandages and things to clean wounds, and some intravenous equipment and a myriad of drugs for pain relief, stopping seizures, nausea and vomiting, through to antibiotics."](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/c5b588a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1333+0+0/resize/1440x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2Fmotorcycle-paramedic-ambulance-photo-story-78.jpg)
!["An ambulance might drive through an area looking for people waving madly. In this case it was in the middle of bushland, about 400 metres away from any road and completely out of sight for the ambulances. There's also a lot of different bike paths around the area. So it was a perfect job for a motorcycle. I was able to travel down a number of those paths and rule them out, and then finally I came across a rider waving his arms, and was able to call the other ambulance over."](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/cd6765c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1557+0+0/resize/1233x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2Fmotorcycle-paramedic-ambulance-photo-story-100.jpg)