A calmer-than-usual New Year's night for the Hato Hone St John ambulance service was still not without its challenges after a member of the public was arrested for throwing an object through the windscreen of an ambulance.

The volunteer brigade responded to 270 incidents across the country last night, which is 55 per cent more than St John would usually attend on an average evening. However, the tally was less than last year's New Year count of 319 jobs.

Five years ago, St John attended 388 - a statistic that reassured St John deputy chief Dan Ohs that incidents were generally decreasing.

Talking to Newstalk ZB's Summer Breakfast this morning, Ohs said while it was a busy night for his crew, he was pleased to see the trend of fewer callouts continuing.

"We have operational plans which are local to a lot of areas, one of the challenges is the population is very dispersed," he explained.

"We have a lot of big concerts and so on and so forth, so for a lot of us we look at all the previous years' callouts to see where we're expecting to have a call, we look at where the big concerts are happening and we move resources around accordingly."

Ohs said last night saw 175 paid ambulance and response vehicles on New Zealand's roads, supported by the service's volunteer network.

He was pleased to learn that while at its peak his units were busy with 22 non-life-threatening jobs, overall the crews were able to reach anybody in desperate life-threatening circumstances.

"That's partly our resourcing," he said of the success of reaching those in need.

"It's partly people doing the right thing, which is for people to call us if the incident is life-threatening and to call Healthline if they don't think it's life-threatening."

Ohs was asked if crews were given special training for handling New Year's Eve incidents and, while he agreed the night typically brought unusual incidents that would need to be handled, he said the usual training would equip staff well enough.

He said the obvious issues would come through people being in high spirits through the impacts of alcohol, meaning his crew needed to be a little more careful on a big night.

"Sometimes, of course, people are so dispersed and they're out in the campgrounds in remote areas, it takes us a bit longer to get to them," he said.

"So from our perspective what we say to the public - especially over the coming weeks for people still out there - is to bear in mind it takes us a little longer for us to get to you."

The deputy chief said St John works hard to ensure the right resources are available to treat those in remote regions but that kindness to staff was critically important.

"They're there to help you and we simply don't want our staff getting abused or getting skinful from people who've had a skinful because they're frustrated if they're in a different place to where they'd normally be."

Ohs said that yesterday afternoon a member of the public threw something through an ambulance's windscreen during a job in central Auckland which forced the vehicle off the road.

He said it was the last thing that was needed ahead of a busy New Year's evening.

"That kind of behaviour, from our perspective, is completely unacceptable and unnecessary."

The member of the public was dealt with swiftly by police, Ohs said, and will be put before the courts when they reopen in the coming week.

"We do see some spikes this time of the year so again, we ask people to be kind to our staff and our gear."