To solve the problem of the belated emergency rescue against drilling accidents caused by the long journey time of rescue vehicles, this paper proposes an improved ant colony algorithm for the path planning of drilling rescue vehicles. Firstly, in view of the deficiencies that the basic ant colony algorithm tends to fall into the local optimum, and the transition probability is calculated only depending on pheromone content and path length without the consideration of external factors affecting road traffic in the actual road network, the paper improves the basic ant colony algorithm by introducing path weight factors and optimizing path selection strategies. Then, the improved ant colony algorithm is employed to establish a path planning model for rescue vehicles with the least time as the goal. Finally, simulation experiments and practical application tests are carried out on the path planning of rescue vehicles. The results of experiments and tests show that the proposed method can reasonably plan a global optimal rescue path, which thus effectively solves the path planning problem of drilling rescue vehicles.