Driver aged about 30 critically hurt in Ben Zvi Road crash in Tel Aviv

A driver of about 30 was critically injured after his car hit the side of the road on Ben Zvi Road in Tel Aviv-Yafo in the early hours of the morning, according to Magen David Adom, Israel's national emergency medical service. The service said its Dan region dispatch centre received the call at 01:57, and that its medics and paramedics took the man to Wolfson hospital with injuries to multiple body systems while still attempting to resuscitate him.

The Israeli broadcaster N12 and the news site Ynet also reported the crash, both describing the driver's condition as critical. N12 reported that Magen David Adom crews had carried out resuscitation on the man before evacuating him, and published a statement from two of the responders describing what they found when they arrived.

What the responders described

In remarks carried by N12, Magen David Adom paramedic Ariel Wasserstein and Gal Salhov, an emergency medical technician with the service's motorcycle unit, said the driver was trapped inside the vehicle when they reached him. According to their account, he was unconscious, had no pulse and was not breathing, and had severe injuries across several parts of the body.

The two said they began advanced resuscitation straight away, which they described as including chest compressions, assisted breathing and the administration of drugs. They said the man was then moved in a Magen David Adom mobile intensive care unit to hospital, with resuscitation continuing on the way, and that his condition was critical. In their words, he was taken to hospital "in critical condition" while those efforts were still under way.

Magen David Adom and the 101 line

Magen David Adom, often shortened to MDA and sometimes described as Israel's equivalent of the Red Cross, runs the country's ambulance and emergency medical response. Members of the public reach it by dialling 101, and calls are handled by regional dispatch centres. The Dan region named in its statement covers the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, the dense urban belt along the central coast.

MDA crews include emergency medical technicians, often called medics, and paramedics, who are qualified for more advanced interventions such as giving medication. The service also operates motorcycle responders, who can move through traffic to reach a scene quickly, and mobile intensive care units, which are ambulances equipped and staffed for patients in the most serious condition. Both appear in the responders' account of this incident.

Reading the Israeli casualty terms

Israeli emergency services grade injuries on a fixed scale, and the word used in all three organisations' reports, anush, is the most severe category for a living patient. It is usually rendered in English as critical and indicates an immediate threat to life. The phrase translated here as injuries to multiple body systems is a standard MDA description for trauma affecting several areas of the body at once, of the kind often seen in high-impact road crashes.

MDA statements are typically issued within minutes of a call and record the condition of a patient at the point of handover to hospital. They do not normally report on later treatment or outcomes, which are a matter for the hospital and, in road crashes, for the police.

The location

Ben Zvi Road is a major thoroughfare in Tel Aviv-Yafo, the municipality that joins Tel Aviv with the older port city of Jaffa. It carries the name of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel's second president. Wolfson, the hospital the driver was taken to, is a large public medical centre serving the southern part of the Tel Aviv area.

The reports describe the crash as the car hitting the side of the road. None of them mentions any other vehicle, pedestrian or person involved, and none refers to anyone else being hurt.

Where the accounts differ

The reports are consistent on the main facts: a man of about 30, a single car hitting the roadside, a critical condition and evacuation to Wolfson. There are small differences in detail. MDA's own statement described the resuscitation and evacuation as in progress, while N12's report put them in the past tense. Ynet's alert located the crash only in Tel Aviv, without naming the road, and did not give the driver's age. Only the responders' account quoted by N12 states that the driver was trapped in the car.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports gives the driver's name or says whether he survived. They do not say what caused the car to leave its lane or strike the roadside, how fast it was travelling, or what the road and weather conditions were. They do not say how the driver was freed from the vehicle or whether fire and rescue crews took part. There is no statement from the Israel Police on whether an investigation has been opened, and no update from Wolfson on the man's condition after he arrived.