Emergency services the world over pride themselves on picking up the phone to answer a distress call within seconds, and usually Malta is no different.

However, an incident that took place on Thursday outside our offices proved different. To cut a long story short, a 14-year-old schoolboy was hit by a car after he jumped off the bus that was dropping him off after school. There are a few issues to look into in this story, but let’s start with the telephone response time.

At 12.50pm this newspaper saw the incident happening and, fearing the worst, staff members from the newsroom frantically dashed to the phones to report the incident to the emergency services.

One person tried first, but after waiting for a minute for someone to answer the phone, others tried ringing more numbers. I myself decided to try and get through by calling Police General Headquarters and asking them to patch me through directly, but after about two minutes without a reply, a colleague dialled 112 as I was still trying to get through on the other phone, but no luck. Another colleague tried to dial 196, a number she uses regularly and to be fair, she said it is usually answered promptly, but again, no answer.

Finally, one of the staff managed to get through on 112. In all fairness, the people at the other end said that the call had already come through from somewhere else to report the injury, but that is not the point. Other people with more serious emergencies might have needed to get through fast. And after working in this job, I can safely say that every second counts in an emergency. We timed it and it took a whole six-and-a-half minutes for our calls to be finally answered, which is clearly not acceptable. In actual fact, it took the ambulance less time to get here (five minutes), than it did for the call to be answered.

Luckily, the boy seemed to have escaped with a lacerated head and a touch of concussion.

Now on to the other aspect. What happened was that the bus, very much like hundreds of others, simply stopped the boy on a main road at a traffic light crossroads. The bus pulled over to the right, to drop the boy off on a central strip and he stepped out into the path of a car that was proceeding normally in the left lane.

This incident proves just how dangerous such practices are. The boy simply stepped off the bus and got run over. Now let us dissect. The bus driver said that he always stops the boy on that stop – but this time there was comeback. Many other people probably find nothing wrong with that and this is precisely where the problem lies. What business does a bus driver, whoever he may be, have of dropping minors off on main roads, pulling over to the right, and at crossroads – as proven, such practice results in accidents.

The Malta Transport Authority said recently that drivers should obey rules and regulations more often and they should look into such scenarios to prevent an even worse accident from happening.

I later spoke with two colleagues who like me spent most of their school years abroad.

I know I am going to take flak for this, but abroad children are educated, very sternly in fact. I still remember the “look left, look right and do it again. If you don’t you could die”. Various people, lollypop ladies, our parents, teachers, and even passers-by used to chastise children and even shout at them if they attempted to cross the road in a dangerous fashion, so the lesson sunk in.

Nothing against the poor lad who got hurt, but it is a wonder that many, many others do not get hurt. It is an issue of education. Kids even dangle off the edge of the bus, getting a rush out of it. Bus drivers on such private duties are in charge of the children on the bus and should ensure that they alight in an orderly fashion. In addition, buses should only drop children off at safe bus stops. This time a boy got away with a head lesion and a headache. Do we have to wait until a boy or girl dies before taking action? The answer should be very clear.