Consider the textbook example, based on the events of July 16, 2002, in Santa Monica, California. On a Wednesday afternoon, against the sparkling backdrop of summer sky and swaying palm trees, an eighty-six-year-old man drove his burgundy 1992 Buick LeSabre down three blocks of Arizona Avenue’s crowded farmers’ market. He was going about sixty miles per hour. He killed eight people and injured forty, and by the time his vehicle came to a stop there was a body pinned under the engine, a body resting on the hood, and an empty pair of shoes on the roof. It will take some time before you show up to a scene like that and feel comfortable. It will take even longer before your only thought is here we go as you snap on gloves and get to work. But if you happened to be there, standing on Arizona Avenue between the rows of produce, the bag of kale your girlfriend asked you to pick up still dangling from your wrist as the Buick shuddered to a stop, you wouldn’t have time to think. Just remember the golden rule of emergency medicine: air goes in and out, blood goes round and round, any variation on this is bad.
