A MAN injured in a road crash says he was kept waiting at the roadside for an ambulance for more than 90 minutes.
Motorist Peter Bartlett waited in pain, in the cold, with severe bruising and three cracked ribs after a three-car accident in Halstead.
The father-of-two was hurt on his way to collect his 16-year-old daughter from her boyfriend’s house in the town.
Five minutes after leaving his home in Hillie Bunnies, Earls Colne, his car was involved in the crash, in Colchester Road, Halstead.
The airbags of his silver Ford Fiesta were activated and the car filled with smoke.
Firefighters cut off his driver’s door off and started cutting through the roof of the car, before freeing him through the doorway.
Paramedics were on the scene by then, but Mr Bartlett said it was 7.30pm before an ambulance took him to hospital – more than an hour and a half after the accident.
Mr Bartlett said he was wrapped in a foil blanket in an effort to keep him warm.
He added: “I wasn’t best pleased the ambulance took so long to turn up.
“It wasn’t just because of the pain I was in – it was bloody cold as well!
“It was starting to become a frosty evening.
“The whole front of my car was just a mangled mess.”
The former lorry driver, who is no longer fit to work because of a previous spinal injury, was told the ambulance had been delayed because it had to come all the way from Frinton.
Mr Bartlett, 47, said since the crash, he had been forced to sleep sitting up upright, because of severe chest pains.
He has been told his recovery is likely to take at least six weeks.
Although he criticised the ambulance services’ response, Mr Bartlett was keen to praise firefighters, who he said “had done an exceptional job”.
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