Overview
- The NHAI issued the tightened circular on Wednesday, August 12, requiring ambulances to reach crash sites within 10 minutes for incidents inside a 10-km radius and to deliver victims to a hospital within one hour.
- Compliance will be verified through AIS-140 GPS units and the NHAI Care incident-management dashboard, and failures will trigger monetary penalties to contractors.
- Penalties include ₹10,000 per missed response or missed hospital transfer, ₹5,000 for delayed ticket acceptance, ₹10,000 for ticket rejection or inspection failures, and ₹2,500 per day for GPS or app downtime.
- The rules add operational KPIs such as daily 5 km dry runs, MDTs with IoT SIMs on roughly 3,000 ambulances and 1,000 patrol/crane units covering about 50,000 km of national highways, and new enforcement duties for project directors.
- Experts welcomed the measurable standards but warned the rules must be paired with data-driven ambulance basing and mapping of trauma-capable hospitals to ensure faster arrival actually improves survival.