“Only if one wire touched the metal, and the other side somehow came in contact with the ground, would you have a danger of a shock.”
The batteries would explode and burn you way before you got a shock that way. Nonetheless, there is still a shock hazard - if you touch the live feed and then another part of the car, you’ll get zapped. It’s actually quite a serious matter.
Once again, you cannot touch the metal and the live feed while using the jaws of life to open the car door.
But certainly, if there were two exposed wires, and you touched the metal with one hand, and the exposed wire with your other hand, you could be in for a nasty shock.
If you are wet, and you touch the car frame with one hand, and grab the 12v line with the other, you can get a nasty shock, and even catch things on fire.
I think they are trained not to be grabbing wires with their bare hands.
We aren’t talking about thousands of volts here. Any standard non-conducting gloves worn by emergency crews will work on the 250volt battery in the new prius, and even on the 350-volt battery in the old prius.
Anyway, the original point was that EMS workers were afraid to rescue people from hybrids, and in fact there is essentially no danger and trained EMS people are not hesitating.