In Germany, an ambulance should arrive within 8 minutes after an emergency call. But this has changed dramatically. Every second emergency response is delayed.

With the omnipresence of smartphones, onlookers have become a huge issue. These “civilian paparazzi” take photos of victims and impede life-saving rescue operations with their sensationalism. Although it became a criminal offense in January 2021, action is rarely taken against ruthless onlookers.

Onlookers are people who risk other people's lives just to get a good look and sharp pictures of victims and this affects emergency response times.

Our approach is to confront onlookers with their misconduct right at the moment of the wrongdoing.

Ambulances, paramedics and equipment have been covered with the innovative digital pattern. The pattern was adapted to each object individually. During a pilot phase with 33 ambulances at 22 rescue stations, the design was further optimized with scientists and engineers. Today, the design is already in use throughout the country at Johanniter Unfall-Hilfe, one of Germanys biggest rescue organizations with 65,000 employees and 750,000 rescue missions per year. The innovative design will soon be extended to other emergency organizations around European countries.

After 4 months, 22% of Germans already said they had heard of the idea. 40% consider the idea “very helpful” (Survey Akkon University). The number of paramedic-job-applications at Johanniter Unfall Hilfe doubled in the months following the campaign. The media coverage after the presentation of the live-saving design raised international attention and awareness about the dangers of gawking. Newspapers and television shows around the world started to report about the idea. The media responses got shared by thousands of social media users.