Italian police use Lamborghini to transport donor kidney 300 miles in two hours
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
Hopefully someone does this with a copter in the future.
Lambo average speed ~150mph. Eurocopter EC145 cruise speed ~150mph.
Even the never-exceed speed of the 145 is ~170mph, which the Lambo should be more than capable of (~200mph).
It surely comes down to a matter of fuel capacity and straight-line travel.
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.
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.
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.
I assumed that since this was a police job that they would have cleared all the roads and intersections along the route.
Roads are almost empty due to lockdown, it's the police and everyone in front will move far away, it's a fast highway track.
Numbers have clearly been cooked so that both Lamborghini and the Police get media exposure.
If they wanted to do it fast they'd have done it at night and without cameras.
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.
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.
It was downhill from there.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU
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.
https://witmerodijk.nl/CarImages/1681/DSC_2492_703381.jpg
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.
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.
In Italy the autostrada legal limit is already higher at 80/130 (and supercar drivers frequently go much over it).
And of course this is the police, they can make an exception for themselves :-)
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.
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
It does to me.
Edit: typo corrected.
This isn't the US. People aren't driving on the left lane just because they can.
Source: speaking from experience
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.
Taken together this means that you can generally go pretty fast in the leftmost 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.
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.
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)
Seems you've never driven in Italy. Let me assure it's very possible. In fact it's just matter of fact!
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 mean Italy is really easy to make fun of either way, you only have to take a look at the government and history to realise that.
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.
https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538(15)3...
Still, if there's a job I'd love to do, it'd probably be this.
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...
It's in the article.
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.