We’re always happy to see motorcycles save lives. Now, while the Piaggio MP3 is a scooter and has three wheels, it leans and is great fun to ride is more than enough for us to welcome it as part of the family. The Piaggio MP3 Life Support scooter does our sport proud, as it can help medical personnel render fast aid to those in need—wouldn’t you rather have a scooter arriving long before an ambulance can negotiate urban traffic or a rural area with damaged roads? We would.
The Piaggio MP3 Life Support is now part of the Italian Red Cross effort. The specialized scooter debuted at the Italian National Territorial Emergency Service’s 30th-anniversary celebration in Rome. It took an amendment to the Italian Highway Code to allow Italians to use this homegrown product to deliver medical personnel and medical equipment, which the government got done late last year.
A mini-ambulance on three wheels, the Piaggio MP3 Life Support scooter is designed for pre-hospitalization first aid on both Basic Life Support and Advanced Life Support levels. The scooter carried immobilization collars, oxygen cylinders, respiratory kits, defibrillators, dressing sets, and infusion sets. To make that happen, the load capacity of the Piaggio MP3 is upped to 142 liters—over twice as much as a Honda Gold Wing Tour.
To help the first-responder avoid getting in a wreck, the Piaggio is equipped with a siren, front-facing flashing LEDs, a flashing 360-degree LED on a pole, and reflective stickers.
While the Piaggio MP3 Life Support is successfully implemented in Australia, France, and the United Kingdom, it has been most strongly embraced by Israel, where a fleet of 650 examples is deployed.
Hopefully, you’ll never need to summon the Italian National Territorial Emergency Service, but if you dial 118 in Italy, you may see a Piaggio MP3 Life Support arriving on the scene.