It's a shitty situation to be put in having to wait that long for an ambulance but the narrative would have been very different if they'd binned it driving to the hospital with somebody who is essentially unrestrained in the back of the van.

Had that happened they would no doubt have been severely criticised for being so reckless by many of the same people that are now defending them, moaning about health and safety gone mad etc.

I know from working in a coastal area in one of the other emergency services that coastguard policy is not to transport members of the public in coastguard vehicles unless absolutely necessary so can only imagine what their policies say about transporting in private vehicles. They are probably quite unusual amongst the main emergency services in that they do have people respond to incidents in their own private vehicles.