Doctors Can Examine Upper Range of Speedometers

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Doctors Can Examine Upper Range of Speedometers

By LAURENCE DARMIENTO

Staff Reporter

Doctors long have needed a license to practice medicine. Now, under a new state program, they can also get a license to speed.

The California Medical Association, in cooperation with the California Highway Patrol, has begun to issue CHP-approved emblems that allow doctors to exceed local speed limits while on the way to emergencies.

The program relies on an obscure section of the vehicle code dating back to 1929 that allows for such an emblem, although the provision hasn’t been exercised for 40 years.

The code section doesn’t allow doctors to legally exceed maximum speed limits posted on freeways, but is expected to help rural doctors who may have to drive for miles on local roadways. It’s also expected to assist doctors getting to patients in Los Angeles and other large urban and suburban areas where local roads often serve as alternatives to gridlocked freeways.

“The reason for this is quite simple: it’s to help patients in dire straits,” said Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive of the CMA.

The emblems are free to association members (additional ones area $10) and cost $50 for doctors who are not in the CMA. Just two weeks after the program was announced, they are already in high demand, with the CMA receiving more than 100 calls from interested doctors, Lewin said.

The question is whether the program may be ripe for abuse and whether it’s a good idea given that doctors work long hours and often are fatigued.

“When you create a loophole you have to have concerns,” said Daniel Finnegan, president of Quality Planning Corp., which performs statistical studies for the insurance industry and recently found that doctors had the second-highest accident rates among all professions.

Legitimate need?

Doctors say the program will serve a real need in a large state, where they must often travel long distances to get to the nearest hospital for a birth or emergency medical procedure.

Dr. Peyam Vafadari, an emergency physician who lives in West Los Angeles but works at hospitals in Lakewood and Los Alamitos, often jumps onto surface streets when he is called in on emergencies.

“It’s a major issue,” said Vafadari, who has gotten two tickets for using the carpool lane while on his way to the hospital. “Probably half the time I get called in it’s some emergency.”

Vafadari, who noted that he has been let go several times after explaining to local police why he was speeding, said the sticker would be more useful if it allowed him to travel in freeway car pool lanes, which it won’t.

The law was revived through the efforts of Dr. James Eustermann, a surgeon who lives in Hanford in the San Joaquin Valley, and who must travel 20 miles to a hospital in Visalia for emergency surgeries.

“I got a call for a gunshot wound one night,” he said. “I was cruising over there about 80 mph on a two lane highway. If I got picked up, (the police) would chew me up and spit me out.”

Eustermann, who has been practicing medicine since the 1960s, remembered that the American Medical Association had such a program 40 years ago but it ended, apparently over the refusal of states to honor the AMA emblem.

Then he and his son researched the California vehicle code and found code Section 21058, which allows for the emblems, and petitioned the CMA to start its own program.

CHP Commissioner Dwight “Spike” Helmick said the law only allows doctors to exceed local speed limits when they can safely do so, and it does not allow doctors to exceed the state maximum speed on local highways, which ranges from 70 mph to 65 mph. It also won’t protect them from prosecution or civil actions if they get into an accident.

The law also leaves much discretion to traffic cops about whether a doctor exceeding speed limits is doing so safely and therefore legally. Los Angeles Police Officer Jason Lee, a department spokesman, said LAPD traffic officers were not yet aware of the program the sticker won’t be available for another month or so but are used to dealing with speeding doctors who claim to be on their way to emergencies.

In those situations, officers verify that there is an emergency by calling ahead to the hospital, and if they feel the doctor has not been driving dangerously will let them go. “Even officers responding with lights and sirens to an emergency call have to use judgment,” he said.

Lewin said he doubted that many doctors would abuse the privilege, but others are not so sure. Even Eustermann said he would not be surprised if some doctors took advantage of it. “Anything you do, there is that 5 or 10 percent that don’t want to adhere to the rule,” he said. “But if you have a cop follow you to the emergency room you will think twice.”

The 2003 Quality Planning Corp. study of 1 million drivers found that doctors had 109 accidents per 1,000 drivers per year. Students were far ahead at No. 1 with 152 accidents, while lawyers were number three at 106. Librarians had 90, teachers 84, clergyman 76.

The data indicated that doctors were generally cautious drivers who tended not to speed, ranking only 20th in that category, but got into accidents because they were fatigued from long work hours late into the night.

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