A motorcyclist who suffered a head injury lay in the middle of a Norwich road for more than an hour-and-a-half waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
The man, who is now believed to be in his 30s, came off his red Honda 125cc following a crash with a Volkswagen Golf shortly after 5.46pm on Monday.
Ambulance officers were on scene at Dereham Road within 10 minutes and began treating him for what was described as a 'serious head injury'.
But it took a further 94 minutes for an ambulance to arrive to transport him to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.
MORE: Rush hour crash between motorbike and car closes Dereham Road in Norwich
During that time, several police officers had to remain in the area to enforce a road closure around the Nelson Street junction.
A spokesman for the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) said the delay was due to a large increase in call-outs that day.
The trust received 3,600 emergency calls on Monday, compared to an average of 3,000 for this time of year.
Of those, the spokesman said 800 were made within a four-hour period between 2pm and 6pm - around 200 calls an hour.
'We would apologise to the man for any further distress caused,' the spokesman added. 'But there has been a significant call volume we have had to deal with.
'In that [four-hour] window, around 260 to 270 of the calls were serious or life-threatening.'
The EEAST said the motorcyclist had 'serious, but not life-threatening' injuries', and was given a Green 1 response code.
There is a 20-minute national standard response time for such incidents, which the trust said it met with the two ambulance officers.
In comparison, Red 1 and Red 2 calls, which are for life-threatening injuries, warrant an eight-minute response.
A trust spokesman added: 'We never want people to feel like they are waiting a long time for an ambulance, but with the demand, we have to priorities those who are dying or close to dying.'
As temperatures soared on Saturday and Sunday, the EEAST received 7,200 calls.
It attributed the spike to the hot weather, and a spokesman added that there had already been a high volume of calls on Tuesday.
The current condition of the motorcyclist is not known, but he was said to be conscious and breathing at the scene.
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