THE Scottish Ambulance Service has fitted its frontline fleet of emergency vehicles with satellite tracking in order to improve its response times and reduce the chances of getting lost in remote areas.

The service will fit the Terrafix Automatic Vehicle Location systems to its 452 ambulances. It is expected that eventually all 1,100 vehicles in the fleet will be fitted with tracking.

The tracking is part of a number of investments being made by the Scottish Ambulance Service, and follows a call for satellite navigation earlier in the year from a Scottish sheriff. Sheriff James Penman made the plea during his summing up of an inquiry into the death of a farm worker last year, when the ambulance got lost en-route.

The service also plans to roll-out a £13m emergency call prioritising service over the next two years after research carried out at Dundee's Ninewells Hospital suggested thousands of lives could be saved if ambulances managed emergency calls more effectively.

Research found nearly one in four ambulance call-outs did not require a trip to hospital.