Taxis given life-saving emergency bandages

A charity is handing out life-saving bandages to taxi drivers at a town's train station.

Rapaid is distributing the military grade bandage kits, designed to stem serious blood loss, to drivers at Chippenham station's taxi rank for use in emergencies.

The charity was set up in Swindon in 2020 in a bid to curb harm caused after the town saw an increase in knife crime.

Insp Pete Foster of Wiltshire Police welcomed the move, and said bleed kits enabled the taxi community "to provide immediate help that could save lives".

Alex Chivers, founder of Rapaid, said: "If one bandage saves one person's life then we've achieved everything."

The kits contain four bandages that can apply 30lb (13.6kg) of pressure to a wound, and four pairs of surgical gloves.

Chippenham is the latest town to receive the kits, others of which have already saved lives elsewhere.

Chivers said: "Police officers at King's Cross Station [in London] were dealing with a victim of knife crime, they ran out to the taxi rank and asked drivers for one of the kits.

"They were handed a kit, they ran back in, dealt with the victim and saved his life," he added.

Chivers is a former Wiltshire Police firearms officer and is a military veteran who served in Afghanistan.

He carried the kits during his service and began distributing them in the UK due to the lack of training they require.

"You can bleed to death in as little as five minutes if you've got a serious haemorrhage and the quicker direct pressure is applied, the better your chances of survival," Chivers said.

"[The kits] are designed for those golden five or ten minutes until help arrives," he added.

Foster said the kit "enables the taxi community, who are mobile throughout public areas and play a key role in the night-time economy, to provide immediate help that could save lives before professional medical responders arrive."

It is as Wiltshire recorded a 4.5% reduction in weapon offences in the year to June 2025, according to the latest figures.

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