Iowa county EMS goes bright yellow for new ambulances, citing safety

By Sarah Watson
Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus

SCOTT COUNTY, Iowa — New ambulances for Scott County will be bright yellow, the supervisors decided Thursday.

The new designs will only go on new ambulances, supervisors emphasized Thursday. The current fleet of ambulances will keep their current MEDIC designs.

| MORE: It’s an ambulance, not an art project

Scott County MEDIC Director Paul Andorf on Tuesday brought two ambulance designs for supervisors to consider: yellow and white. Both had the new blue and green logo that was designed after the county absorbed the nonprofit ambulance service in January of 2024.

Andorf previously had brought a dark gray and a blue option to the supervisors for consideration in December, but supervisors expressed concern about the visibility of those colors in poor weather conditions and that it could potentially lead to more crashes.

Supervisor Ken Beck emphasized the county is only rebranding new ambulances that it planned to purchase anyway to replace retiring ambulances. The new ambulances need to have some kind of design.

“We can’t go around the county with a white truck,” Beck said.

The cost to wrap ambulances with MEDIC’s current design is about $10,000, Andorf told supervisors Tuesday. The new design concepts will cost between $10,000 and $16,000.

Supervisor Maria Bribriesco said she’d received emails from residents concerned about the county spending money unnecessarily. She said the county can afford to purchase both new medical supplies and a new logo, which makes it clear the new ambulances are part of Scott County .

Supervisors Chair John Maxwell said the supervisors chose yellow because of safety statistics backing up the color.

In 1995, a study on Dallas, Texas, fire emergency vehicles found that lime or yellow fire emergency vehicles were less likely to experience visibility-related accidents compared with red and white vehicles. Another study in 2018 found that departments that used red fire vehicles had higher accident rates than departments that used yellow or lime.

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