Yellow Yellow Yellow: The Indycar Safety Team (2017) - full transcript
During Practice for the 2015 Indy 500 James Hinchcliffe (Dancing With the Stars, ABC) suffered a horrific crash that nearly cost him his life. This 1 hour television special tells the story...
....
There are questions
that very few people
ever have to ask themselves
in their lifetime,
but every IndyCar driver
probably has to ask at least
once in their career.
"What happens
when I hit a wall
at 200 miles per hour?
What will the forces
more than 100 times of
the Earth's gravity feel like
when it compresses my body?
Who will come for me?
Who will help me?"
....
waiting patiently in trucks,
any number of ways.
And they're the first
to arrive on the scene
when this happens.
IndyCar is unique
in the motorsports world
in that they are
one of the few racing series
that support a dedicated
safety team that travels
to all of the races.
We're all firefighters,
paramedics on the trucks.
We have three trucks,
four guys on each truck.
There's an incident
command person,
or the crew leader,
there's a paramedic,
and then
we have two firefighters
that sit in the back seats.
Their responsibility is
the seat they're sitting in.
So the driver
is the crew leader,
front seat's the paramedic,
firefighter one
sits behind the paramedic,
firefighter two
sits behind the driver.
Safety team manager, Mike Yates
and crew leader, Mike Kareya
are veteran members
of the Holmatro safety team.
Much of their work begins
before a car even sets
a tire on the track.
Usually, it's the day before
the activity starts
on the weekend.
Mike and I will come
to the track in the morning.
Try to do a couple of laps
around the track, just to see
if there's anything different
from what we've done from
last year to this year.
There's changes
that have to be made
a lot of times,
but they're small,
and they can be handled
before the weekend starts.
Our trucks themselves,
the way they're hauled now,
they're on an open hauler
So we have to take all of
that stuff out of the trucks
and set the trucks up.
That takes another two
or three hours usually.
We have a 40-gallon tank
of water in our truck.
This is our hose,
it's operated by
nitrogen pressure.
This is our IndyCar starter.
If the car stalls
we use these
to restart the car
and send him on his way.
It's what the teams use
when they're in the pits,
starting their cars.
This is just
Oil-Dri containers.
We get oil on the track,
we just put this down
and brush that oil
till we get
racing conditions again.
This is lifting harnesses
for the cars.
This is what we pull out...
We have an incident on
the track, or a car blows apart
or we can't pull it in.
These are all used
to keep the driver...
We get the driver out of
the car in a safe manner,
not dragging out
any problems with him.
This is the AP units
for the Holmatro tools,
they're electric.
Got the core technology
on them.
This one's hooked up
to the cutter.
The other APU,
it's hooked up
to our spreader,
so if we have to spread
the compartment of the car
and get some intrusion,
in the car with a driver
to get him out.
We'll put those in there
and spread the cockpit
of the car out.
Every track on
the IndyCar schedule
already has
a team of firefighters,
paramedics and doctors,
who manage safety at
the individual tracks.
working with local
safety teams is
an essential part of the job
I usually like to have
anywhere from three
to four local trucks.
And that's in combination
with our three trucks.
Most of the time,
or if not always,
they've been around
their race track
for a long time.
So I take as much information
from them as they get from me.
And so what we do
is we have safety
meetings every day
and explain to them what
their responsibilities will be.
We do not dispatch on sight.
We do want to dispatch
from Control.
Make sure they
tell you when to go.
They got a pretty good
sight lines here, so they
can get you out there safely.
But we want you
to get out there
as quickly as we can
'cause we want somebody
making sure that
the driver is okay.
When a crash happens,
the safety team functions
under a system of
procedures and protocols
that dictates the role
every team member
plays on the track.
Our dispatcher's been
with us for a while.
His name's Jim Norman.
And he's up in the tower,
he can see everything
that's going on.
He'll call the triple yellow.
Yellow flags.
Yellow flags.
Proceed with caution.
It's too close.
Proceed with caution.
It's too close.
There's three different
areas that we came up with.
There's your impact area,
where the car makes
impact with the wall.
There's where the car
comes to rest.
And then you have
a debris field
between those two.
So those are three areas
you need to
address immediately.
The truck that's
closest to the car
would go to the car.
The truck that's going
to the impact point will
stop at the impact point.
The paramedic goes
straight to the driver
to see if he's injured,
and if so,
what type of injury.
Are we gonna be able
to send him standing up
and ambulatory,
or are we gonna have to
extract him from the car,
those sorts of decisions.
Firefighter one
always comes off with a
pressurized water container.
Firefighter two comes off
with a five-gallon Oil-Dri
container.
It's got Oil-Dri in it.
His job, if they
broke their oil line,
he dams up the oil,
keeping it contained
to the car
as tightly as he can.
The incident commander,
the crew leader
gets out of the car,
kind of sizes up the scene
pretty quickly.
Cause while we're doing'
all this, television is wanting
to know when we're going green,
fire control is the same.
At the impact point,
the crew leader inspects
the damage to the wall,
the facility, the track,
the fence.
If there's any damage
to any of these
he can call in
the local resources and
the track restoration people
to fix whatever
needs to be fixed,
so we can continue racing.
The third truck in,
that's usually
our clean-up truck.
And it will drop its
three-man crew off
at the race car.
If they don't need any help,
those three guys will
start walking back up
towards the impact point
on the racetrack,
cleaning debris.
The other two guys that
are on the impact point truck,
they will start walking
towards the race car,
picking up debris.
Then when those people meet,
they turn around
and they walk back to
their respective trucks.
Our doctors ride
in a separate truck.
And that's our 1200 car.
It's an SUV type vehicle.
When we're outside of
the State of Indiana,
we'll do basic life-support.
If there's any
advanced life-support
that has to be done,
we defer to
the local paramedics
that work on the ambulances
and the rescue vehicles
that are on the scene with us.
Then they function under
their local medical director,
which is there on the scene.
We work really well together
with all the tracks.
There's a respect
we gain from each other
when we're there.
So we try to work as closely
with those folks as we can.
The benefit is
there's a core group of guys,
we work together
every weekend.
The drivers know who we are.
They feel comfortable
about looking up and seeing
somebody that they know.
When a crash occurs,
the safety team
are the first responders
who arrive to
safeguard the driver
before turning their attention
to packaging up damaged cars
and cleaning the track,
so racing can resume.
This looks like the end
of the incident.
But in IndyCar,
these are just the first steps
in a cascade of analyses
that take place
after an accident.
Jeff Horton, an engineer
by training, leads a group
for IndyCar
that analyzes
on-track accidents.
My main role
is accident investigation.
Once Mike Yates' team
gets done with it
on the racetrack,
they package it up,
put it on a wrecker
and it comes back to us.
That's when we do
an investigation of it.
Regardless of the damage
or whether there was
an injury or not,
we record as much information
as we can about that accident.
And we take
pictures of the car,
so we understand the damage.
I take pictures for
the database that we keep
on all the accidents.
Specifically, what I'm doing
is not only taking pictures
of the current damage,
but also damage that
we can't necessarily see.
Just so that we can keep
a complete database
on all the parts.
And then I download
the crash box itself.
Every IndyCar
contains a crash recorder
that provides data which
the accident investigation
group can analyze immediately.
in a mobile office
that travels to every race.
We've got about six pages
of graphs and summary data.
And that includes
the impact levels
from the car,
and the driver's
ear accelerometer, which
they wear in their ears.
So these are the custom
ear sensors that we make
for every driver.
There's an electronics package
which consists of
three accelerometers
which measures each
of the three axes.
So we've got forward,
backward, left, right,
up and down,
the force that's acted
on the driver's head,
and then the little red thing
you can see is a covering
for the speaker
that you use to hear
and communicate
from the team's radio.
So this is a custom piece,
the mold itself is all
custom to each driver.
These are 100 percent
made inside IndyCar.
The data is captured
in the crash box itself.
So it's perfectly lined up with
the accelerations of the car.
So this is our one interface
to the drivers
to tell what
they're going through
during an accident.
The crash box tells us
what the car is going through
and then the ear
accelerometers tell us what
the driver's going through.
During an IndyCar
qualifying session,
driver Charlie Kimball
makes hard contact
with the SAFER Barrier
that momentarily lifts
his car off the track.
Charlie was fortunate enough
to walk away from the crash
while the accident
investigation team steps in
to perform an analysis
of the impact.
Since we have all three axes,
this is the first hit.
So based on the polarities,
so we've got a left-rear...
Left-front hit,
excuse me.
So we know when
the longitudinal forces
are negative that's front.
And we know that the lateral,
when it's negative, that's
the left side of the car.
So we know that
he hit left-front.
So we're looking at a 40G
and an 85G hit.
The actual result of that
when you add those together
was 93Gs.
One of the major
innovations from IndyCar
is the SAFER Barrier.
A wall of foam and steel tubing
that rings the outside
of the track
and absorbs some of
the high-G impact
from an accident.
At places like Indianapolis,
where the speeds are up
in the angles that they hit,
typically, it attenuates
down to about a 60G pulse.
Which is dramatic,
'cause a bare concrete wall
would have been
over 100 in the past.
So they do a very good
job of attenuating.
But with the damage
that was done to that car,
again, you're talking
well over 100Gs
and a concrete wall
versus the SAFER walls.
We're lucky that
during a sanctioned event,
which means either
a race weekend or an open test,
we have a full selection
of cameras we can use.
And that's invaluable
when you're looking
at replaying an accident.
'Cause you're gonna
actually see what happened.
There were two initial hits,
the big one
we just talked about.
There is another one,
probably as the car
spun around
and then there was a time
he was in the air and
not really hitting anything,
and that's about 1.4 seconds.
So there's one, two,
the small one, three,
four, five, six, seven.
There's basically
ten substantial hits.
His very first hit
all happened in a time frame
of probably 30 milliseconds.
It's a fairly wide impact
in our world,
so he's gonna feel that.
But a lot of times now,
we can tell from that
that there's a probability
that there's an injury
or there's a potential
for an injury, and sometimes
it doesn't show up.
So, like, with Charlie,
I'll wait 48 hours
and call him.
For many, many years now
Dr. Trammell has been
involved with us.
The two of us together
work very well.
He's an orthopedic surgeon
with a big mechanical
background.
I'm an engineer that
understands the cars
very, very well.
So we can look
at both sides of
the kinematics of a crash.
We can look at the car
and what went on with that
and Dr. Trammell can
tell us about the body
and what we would need to do
to prevent those injuries.
The biggest thing is
we've had so many
accidents over time
that you can predict
a probability of a particular
kind of injury from
the crash pulse.
So for example, if we have
a 90G vertical crash pulse,
that's just a big spike
in the bottom of the car,
with enough width,
that's predictive
of a spine fracture.
During the final lap
of a race in Houston,
driver Dario Franchitti
suffered spinal injuries
and a concussion
in a violent crash
that caused him to
retire from racing.
We understand a lot of
the loading levels that
are potential to cause injury.
Now, most of the time
a driver will feel that
when he gets out
and we especially look
at the head Gs
and then any vertical Gs,
and if there's
any markers in the data,
which means high level Gs
we calculate what we call
a HIC value, which stands
for Head Injury Criterion.
Then I let the nurses
and the doctors know,
"Hey, pretty big head hit."
So the data always gets
looked at real quick.
The doctors need that
information, we get it
to them as quick as we can.
All of this
graphing, logging,
and data collection
serves a very immediate
need to spot any
potential health risks
to the drivers
involved in a crash.
But it also serves
a much bigger purpose
in the goal to expand
IndyCar safety.
The rest of the year,
we do a lot of research.
Which includes sled testing,
drop-tower testing,
and things like that,
so it's a complete
closed-loop system,
where what we learn
at the racetrack
we can go in and make
improvements to the cars,
whether it's new seats,
new headrests,
safety devices for the drivers.
Then they will
implement them into the rules
in the years to come
as soon as we get them ready
and make sure they're
the right thing to do.
My memory kind of fades out
about the start of that lap.
Kicks back in, you know,
waking up in ICU,
on a ventilator.
At the time I had
absolutely no memory
of how I got there.
Leading up to
the 99th running of
the Indianapolis 500,
the safety team
and IndyCar officials
were focused on issues
that were causing drivers
to get airborne
in single car crashes
during practice.
Fortunately, there were
no major injuries
from the accidents.
And IndyCar moved quickly
to implement changes
to protect driver safety.
By the final practice session,
it looked like
a solution had been found.
But the safety team
is always ready when
the unforeseen happens.
So we were out there,
it was early in the session,
I think maybe an hour in,
and I was running
around there
just trying to do some
draft practice, and you know,
work on the race car.
The accident all started when
the right front rocker failed.
And that's a very,
very rare failure.
I've seen cars hit the wall
very hard and the rockers
are still fine.
That's just not a piece
that, traditionally,
has an issue.
Oh, and a hard contact!
James Hinchcliffe.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
we were dispatched.
It was up on the north end,
in turn three,
coming out of three and four,
and we were stationed
in one and two.
When Safety 3 got to the car,
the crew leader on that vehicle
called a Code zero-five.
Our codes go 01
as an ambulatory driver,
uninjured.
Code zero-two is orthopedic,
zero-three is a change
of level of consciousness,
like a concussion.
Five is like a multi-systems
life threat.
When we got that code,
we went on instead of
the impact point,
we went on down to the scene.
When I got there, of course,
we were having trouble
getting him up out of his seat.
Basically,
the piece of suspension,
it went in the tub end,
entered me right under
my, kind of, right butt cheek.
And it came out up around
my left hip.
And so the biggest amount
of damage was actually
through my left glute,
there was essentially
a couple of inch diameter
metal rod
that went straight
through the muscle
of my left glute.
I couldn't get my fingers
between his hips and the seat,
so we figured that
the tub was compressed.
And we got the spreaders
and put them down in
and spread the tub.
We heard the tub pop
a couple of times,
and then it became loose.
They realized
that there was no way
to get me out of the car
with that piece of suspension
still in me.
They apparently looked at me
and said,
"All right,
here's the situation.
We need to pull you
out of the car
and once we start,
we're not stopping until
you're out of this car.
So you can kick and you can
scream and you can swear,
you can do whatever you want.
But once we start pulling,
we're not stopping
until you are off this piece
and out of this car."
The impalement that
he had from the suspension
created some issues
with bleeding.
They got me into the ambulance
and immediately
were just trying
to pack the wounds and try
and stop the bleeding.
We stopped by the Care Center
and picked up the surgeon.
You know, if you've got
a driver that's critically
injured in your ambulance,
and you're headed
to the hospital.
And that surgeon is
sitting there next to you,
he sees what you're doing
and the problems
that you're having.
So he's got
a pretty good idea
what he's gonna have to do
when this driver gets to him.
And when we got
to Methodist,
it was almost immediately,
he went straight
to the shock room
and then
straight up to surgery.
I had two operations.
One to take care of
the artery that was hit
as the suspension
went through me.
It hit my femoral artery,
and you know, bleeding out
was the big worry of that day.
I mean, when I think about
the idea of a piece of metal
that size
going through my body
at that place,
and literally,
all that was hit was muscle,
and no organs, nothing else.
I mean, the artery, yeah,
but that could've just
been so much worse.
Oh, and a hard contact!
James Hinchcliffe.
My involvement would've been
the same as it would've been
for any other accident.
The race car was packaged up,
put on a wrecker
and brought back to me.
Because of that level
of that injury, at the time,
we took that back
to a secure area.
It was quite evident
from the video we saw
that it looked like
a suspension failure
that caused him to, basically,
drive directly into the wall.
We took a quick look
at the failure,
that had actually happened.
We wanted to make sure
we weren't gonna see that
same type of failure,
or at least put
another driver through that.
So, immediately,
that was our focus there.
As the parts came back,
we laid them out.
We do very much like airplane
reconstruction sometimes,
where we lay the parts out
relative to the top.
The analysis that was done
on the suspension failure
and some of
the suspension piece
that broke into car,
some changes have
been made to that
to make it safer.
By the next day, I think,
they had already
designed a piece to add
to the lower wishbones,
that if it were to
snap off its pickup point
and not bend
it would slide along the tub
rather than be forced into it.
So there were things,
literally within 24 hours
that the series had
implemented to make sure
it didn't happen again.
Mike sat with me
the next day and we
went through everything.
We went through
the crash loads and the video,
the post-accident pictures.
One of the challenges
of that accident
was the way the suspension
piece had come through the tub,
through the seat
so they didn't know
why he was hung up.
So the goal is to try to
understand if we could
develop new tools
to help them either chop in
to the side of the tub,
spread the tub apart,
something beyond the tools
they had today
to make that analysis
easier and quicker.
We never quit thinking,
especially when drivers
have been injured.
It's still ongoing,
even after all this time.
We're still looking at ways,
whether it's extrication
or to make the car safer.
So there's been a lot
of changes that came
out of that accident.
Between the people that
showed up at the car first,
the experience they had,
the decisions they made,
you know, in that
short period of time,
the hospital staff
and the quality of hospital
that I ended up at,
I mean,
any one of those things
not being in place...
Who knows?
Even as a little kid,
when I used to watch
the IndyCar races,
for me,
what fascinated me
apart from the racing
and the technology
and the speed was
how well those people
organize having their
own hospital on site,
with their own doctors
and people that understand
about the job.
People don't realize
how much IndyCar did
for safety in racing.
IndyCar works hard
to improve driver safety
with a team of safety workers,
doctors, and engineers.
But they also have an open
channel of communication
with the people who have
the most to gain or lose
on the track.
I'm the president
of the driver's association.
Our connection with IndyCar
is extremely open.
So it's just pick up
the phone and say,
"We have an issue."
We'll have a drivers meeting
or we'll have an email
that we say,
"Hey, this is a concern.
Somebody just
put a concern out."
We discuss between us
how we are gonna put this to
IndyCar so they can understand.
I'm the drivers'
medical advocate.
The Professional Drivers
Association is really just
a communications network
of the current drivers.
The ultimate function
is to be able to foresee
and anticipate
circumstances that could
produce injury and try and
prevent them before they occur.
We found that
if drivers had questions,
whether it was
head-rest padding,
seat-belt fit, either them
or their team managers
would come see us
and ask us questions.
It's very rewarding when
they come to ask you,
"What should I do
in a safety situation?"
We travel together, so we're
with them, every weekend
we're on the road.
It's not uncommon for us
to be working on the car
after the accident situation,
where we're cataloging,
and the driver's been released
and walks back up.
Depending on what it is,
I'll talk to him and see
what they went through.
It's always good having
first-hand information,
see it they hurt anywhere.
So they're always around,
we're always talking to them.
It's always a development.
And you kind of
pin-point what's important
for the series,
what's important for safety,
for us, for the fans.
Every move we make in IndyCar,
it's very well thought of.
I'm not saying we're gonna
get it right all the time.
But it's not like somebody
just came up and said,
"We need to put this there."
Then we're being irresponsible.
But we're not gonna
get it right all the time.
We give an annual presentation
to the drivers.
My opening statement
is always,
"If you get hurt,
I take it very personally.
If you get hurt,
I feel like I've failed you
in some way
because we didn't anticipate
your situation, your injury
and prevent it.
However, if you get hurt
because you didn't do something
that we told you to do,
because we knew it would
protect you from this injury,
I take that equally
as personally,
and I will be in your face."
After a devastating crash,
fast action from the IndyCar
safety team and doctors
saved James Hinchcliffe
from what could've been
a fatal accident.
In hospital, James started
down the road to recovery.
The injuries were largely
soft tissue damage
through my legs
and pelvic region.
Unfortunately,
the best thing that
you can do for that
for a certain amount of time
is nothing.
As a competitive person,
you wanna push,
you wanna get better
as fast as possible, right?
And they're like,
"No, that's great.
But to do that
we need you to do nothing."
And that was so hard for me
to kind of wrap my head around.
You want to be doing
as much as possible
to get better.
And then once I was cleared
to sort of start moving again,
it started off with,
you know, just simple
things like walking.
I would be given
a step counter
and told, "All right,
this day you're allowed to do
this many steps, no more.
And the next day
you can do this many steps
and no more."
So I would do laps
around my couch
with my pedometer
until I hit my steps.
And then I'd go sit back down.
When you're sitting down,
basically, for two months,
you lose a lot of muscle
and you lose a lot
of flexibility.
Honestly, getting the
flexibility back and some of
the stretching that took place
was some of the most painful
part of the rehab
because, you know,
you have all these muscles
and all this tissue
that's been damaged
and freshly repaired.
Now you're trying to
stretch it out for
the first time.
Man, there were some times
there where it was just
pure agony.
First time you're
picking up dumbbells,
and they're five pounds.
My trainer's like,
"All right, take it easy."
I'm like, "What?"
Again, that's part
of the mental side of
that kind of rehabilitation.
As much as you want to push,
you need to know
where that limit is
and finding that point
was really challenging.
The other thing that wasn't
as widely reported
was I actually had
quite a bit of damage
to my neck.
And obviously,
that's a pretty big part
of driving a race car,
you need to have a strong neck.
And for a long time
that's what worried me,
was that that wasn't
going to be good enough
ever again
for me to drive a car
or road course.
I stopped shaving,
and you know, my beard kinda
took on a life of its own,
and it was sort of a thing
there for a while,
but the fact of the matter
is I stopped shaving
'cause I didn't wanna see
what I looked like.
Because I'd lost
so much weight.
Just muscle atrophy,
and not being able
to eat, really, at first.
It is a really
helpless feeling,
in a sense, you know.
I mean, it's all I know.
Like, racing is not a job,
it's a life.
The harder part was knowing
that I was in no condition
to be at the track.
You know, it's one thing
to not be there,
but it's another thing
to know that
even if you have
the opportunity to be there,
you couldn't do it.
I could barely sit on a couch,
never mind the thought of being
tossed around in an IndyCar.
The support from everybody
that poured in after that...
It was the most
incredible part of this
entire experience, really.
And there's no doubt that
seeing all that support
from everybody,
it really helped
on the bad days.
I remember when I got
to Toronto, it was my first
time back at the track.
And I saw Mike.
I mean, I nearly
broke into tears.
I just hugged him.
It was, uh...
That was a pretty
emotional moment.
There's no words, you know.
I don't know...
I'm usually
pretty good at talking.
I think anybody who knows me
well will admit that,
but there was
just nothing to say.
I had no vocabulary
to express how I felt,
and the gratitude
and the appreciation,
and all that.
So it was literally just
a whole lot of hugs
and almost tears kinda thing,
standing in the middle
of the racetrack, and it's...
What's so awesome about them
is none of them are looking
for any accolades,
or, you know,
recognition in any sense.
This is just what they do,
you know,
and they care about you
as much as,
you know, as much as
they would family.
Because like I said,
this is a big family.
With the track dormant
in the dead of winter,
the safety team gathers
in Indianapolis
to review the previous
race season and train
for the upcoming season.
We have cameras
in our trucks,
so we can actually watch
safety, too,
pull up and see exactly
what they're doing
at a race car,
whether they're extracting
the driver or how bad it is.
That'll mentally prepare us
for what we have to do
once we get there to help.
At this point,
we've got a pretty good
action circle going here.
If Safety 3 gets
to the car first,
his job is to
secure the scene,
pass on information
to the next truck in,
and make sure they know
what's going on.
The thing is,
what you have to do
when someone is injured,
you have to critique that,
you have to download
everything you did
and look at it, and,
"Can I improve the outcome
of what happened to them
in that accident
the next time?"
After reviewing
and discussing a series
of on-track incidents,
the safety team
moves to a workshop
for training,
and to try new tools
provided by the safety team's
sponsor, Holmatro.
What we're gonna do today
is use the hydraulics
up here by the car.
We're gonna use the saw blade
that he's got back here
and we're just gonna try
to cut down to the floor.
Then again, we're gonna
take our spreaders
and try to get this down
and break it down
to the floor,
and just see how quickly
we can do that.
We're looking at
trying to design a tool
that would make it
a lot easier for us to access
where we needed access.
We work with
our technical department,
brainstorm and put
these things together,
present this thing to
Holmatro engineers to help us
develop this tool
that's needed.
You can imagine what
the inside of an IndyCar,
the footbox looks like.
If you see the outside
you know how small it is.
Well,
it's even smaller inside.
We take the nose off a car,
we can get down in there
and actually,
if they're tangled up,
we can use these cutters
in there.
You could always improve
on what you do,
that's why we train.
It is to get better
and faster at what you do
and more efficiently.
Especially working with
these type of cars,
the space you
have to work with
is very confined.
And working in
that confined space,
it's a little technical stuff,
getting the drivers out
sometimes, you gotta take
the head surrounds out,
gotta take
the steering wheel out,
we train on that
so we know how to
do it very efficiently.
Responding to
accidents and driver injuries
on the track
is the main purpose
of the IndyCar safety team.
But they also function
in many different capacities
during a race.
On a road and street
course, we're like
an over-the-wall crew.
Only we work for
every team out there.
We carry IndyCar starters,
we carry the, you know,
quick jacks,
and we get to a car,
we might have to pull
it out by the tires,
get it turned around,
get it sent on its way.
It's a matter of
just sorting out
what's in front of you.
Everybody thinks
that they should be
the first one started.
We'll take a verbal beating
all day long,
it doesn't hurt us.
Now, if their arguing
keeps us from
doing our job,
and it's costing us time
on the racetrack,
we'll kind of
push back a little bit,
but in order to have
the personality to get out
and drive these cars,
they're pretty
type A personalities anyway.
And then if you add fuel
to the fire by pushing on that,
make a bad situation worse.
I enjoy motorsports,
I enjoy being
at the racetrack.
I enjoy all the stuff
in between.
I don't necessarily
enjoy the crashes,
But that's why we're here,
is for that.
And we're here to take
care of the drivers
and get them back on the track
as quickly as possible.
Ninety nine percent
of the time, it's fun.
You get that one percent
of the time where it's
not so fun.
The safety crew
is there to ensure
the safety of the drivers.
But there are risks to
working on a track with cars
that weigh 1,500 pounds
and behind a pace car,
are often traveling
80 miles an hour.
There's rules that
they have to slow down.
And the crew leaders,
especially, will get
on the radio
and they will tell
the race director, they'll call
that team and let them know,
"Hey, heads up
because next time
could be a penalty."
The biggest danger
is something that's
out of their control.
'Cause where there's
been a crash,
you've probably got oil,
you've probably got debris.
So they could pop a tire
when you're loaded into a turn
and you're working
in that turn.
During a race
in Kentucky,
a tire blew on driver
Danica Patrick's car
that sent her spinning,
and narrowly missing
a safety truck.
I had no clue as to
why she didn't hit anything.
Talked to the guys,
they just heard a pop.
And they looked
in the rear-view mirror
and didn't see anything
until she hit the side.
Those are things that
I guess, you've got
no control over 'em.
For the most part,
though, the guys have
been firefighters,
and paramedics,
rescue people all their life.
There's a certain amount
of risk that you're
going to accept
because that's what
we've done all our lives.
Unnecessary risk
is unacceptable,
but there's a risk there that
we're willing to take,
just to make sure these guys
in those cars are okay.
And what about
another big risk
the safety crew faces?
Every now and then,
we don't get a porta potty
by our station.
Sitting for hours
in hot trucks, far away from
the track facilities,
there are certain needs
that can't be ignored.
You gotta go, you gotta go.
We gotta stay hydrated,
so part of staying hydrated
is going.
It's frustrating sometimes.
But you gotta go,
you gotta go.
The safety crew
could be called into action
any time during a race.
Is it possible that they
could literally be caught
with their pants down?
Absolutely. You have to
hustle on out.
That's the bad part,
is if you're caught going,
you just gotta
zip it up and go.
For IndyCar,
the concern for driver safety
doesn't end when
the cars leave the track.
Safety is a year-round
undertaking that involves
research projects
that extend
through the off season.
All of our data, of course,
is in the database,
and that gives us
the accidents to go look at
and drill in deeper
when we do our research
during the winter.
IndyCar has been
incredibly good
about responding to
need for safety improvements.
Any time anybody's injured,
the primary focus is,
"Why did this happen?
What would it take to lessen
the forces below the threshold
of human failure?
When does a bone break?
It's a bio-material
and has a threshold.
Got some elasticity,
it'll bend a little bit
before it breaks.
We do sled testing.
We do not use a real car.
That would be too expensive.
We have what we call
a sled buck,
which looks like a metal
piping structure
that simulates what
a car and driver's
seating area is.
It allows us, quickly,
to change foam materials,
or any type of energy-
resourceful materials.
We have our own
crash test dummy
called The Thor.
Our Thor dummy is
more biofidelic.
So he's got a little
different neck, he's got
quite a bit different spine
and we can actually
articulate him.
Our IndyCar drivers sit at
about a 45 degree angle.
So the modifications we've
made to him, we can
articulate him into
a cockpit seating area,
just like one of our drivers.
Some of the
first tests we did,
we properly broke him.
He was made for
the automotive world,
which they typically test,
we've all heard of
bumper tests.
20Gs, 25Gs at the most.
Our test pulse was
a 70G pulse.
When it hit, he ramped up
out of the car
and we promptly broke
what is his clavicle.
Because of the loading.
The dummy had never
seen a load like that.
So it was easy for us
to go in and modify it.
We've had a series of crashes
that have resulted in
failure of the side of the tub.
And it's
a step-wise occurrence.
You have a minor failure,
the driver hits the side
of the tub a little bit,
and he's sore,
out of breath.
And the next step along the way
is where you have
a little bit more severe,
where they break their pelvis,
break a hip.
Something in that nature.
But each time there,
you're getting a crash pulse
you know how much force
it takes to fracture the tub.
Then you know how much
more force it takes to
fracture the driver.
Then you have one
where the driver's
seriously injured
and you've got
a much higher force.
But got a graph now,
you got an array
and you can say,
"Well, this is the trend
and this is where we're going."
And now with three points,
you can start speculating
what the pulse graph
would look like.
We got a new chassis in 2012.
We saw that
as a reset point.
We started looking at drivers
and injuries prior
to the 2012 car.
Every one of them, to a tee,
it didn't matter how tall
or short they were,
had seats that were very thin.
They all felt like they wanted
to sit on the floor of the car
They'd want to sit
right on the carbon fiber
on the floor of the car.
So a driver's seat, typically,
would have zero foam
under their butt.
And it takes a certain
amount of energy
for our average
160-pound driver
to absorb that.
With the advent of our
2012 car, we were actually
able to put foam in the car
before the driver
ever took his seat.
So we now have a three-inch
piece of EPP foam
behind their back,
and we have 1.2 inches
under their butt.
And that's one of the things
that have made this car so safe
when it comes to accidents.
Can we evolve a car that has
better driver protection than
what we have now?
We'll always be
able to do that.
There'll always be something
that you can do better.
But you don't know that
when you're do it
until they figure out
another way to crash it.
The thing that
I just really don't like
to hear at a racetrack is,
"That'll never happen."
Because I can guarantee you,
it will. It just hasn't
happened yet.
If you can think of it,
it's gonna happen.
We had a big
road course headrest change
we did two years ago.
There was an accident
in Baltimore,
involving Scott Dixon
and Will Power.
It was a really small accident.
It was on a restart, I believe.
We had heard from Scott
the week after,
that he had
a pretty good headache
from that.
It was only like a 10G,
10-15G hit.
We don't typically raise
our eyebrows anymore
unless it's a 50G
and above hit. Thankfully.
So, we looked at
this headrest and from
the in-car camera and stuff
and what Scott went through,
and what ended up happening.
He had severe vibration.
So when you look at the in-car
his head rattled back and forth
between the headrest.
And what we found out,
talking to the drivers
after this
is that a lot of
the street course,
it was just rough.
Their heads banging around,
they were having headaches
and stuff after the race.
It was due to the EPP foam
that was there.
It was doing its job
on big impacts,
the 50G impacts.
But all of a sudden,
we had a new data point,
where it wasn't working
at the low-G impact.
We were able to take
the crash box data,
go up to the crash sled
that we use up in Westfield,
and we were actually able to
duplicate exactly what Scott's
head went through on the sled.
We were able to run
all these materials
on the headrest
and we took over 40Gs
of that impact level
out of that type of accident.
Knock on wood,
we've pretty much
eliminated that now.
And that all came
from an accident analysis,
turned it to the sled,
proofed the information
and proofed the materials.
In a true impact situation,
our headrest does
all the work.
We always say,
"We're trying to put
ourselves out of business."
The day we quit
hurting drivers, we're done.
We've got a focus,
we know what our target is,
and we've got good research
money to do it, we've been
able to do it over the years.
My third question
when I woke up in ICU
was, "When can I
get back in a car?"
Here I am,
laying in hospital,
can't speak,
five machines hooked up to me.
Barely made it through
the last 24 hours,
and my third question was,
"When can I get back into
the machine that put me here?"
I had moments over
the next couple of months
whether I thought
I'd be able to.
But never once did I ever waver
on whether or not I wanted to.
After suffering
severe injuries,
in an accident during
Indianapolis 500 practice,
James Hinchcliffe recovered
during the remainder
of the IndyCar season
and returned to racing
the following year.
You've got this balance,
right, you know,
you're a competitor,
and you're like,
"No matter what
I'm gonna get back."
But there's always that
five percent in your brain
that's like,
"Yeah, but what if that
never happens again?
What if you can't
do this ever again?"
And that was like terrifying.
And I don't know if that
adds more motivation to get
better or what,
but there were
definitely times where
standing in the shower,
and I can't even,
like, lift my head up
'cause my neck's in
so much pain
it's stuck in this position.
I'm like, "Well, you can't
drive a race car doing this."
And so, there were definitely
days where it was just
really a challenge
to kind of accept
where I was and understand
where I was going.
James' real victory came
one year after his accident
when he returned to
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
to become the fastest car
on track,
and take the pole position
for the 100th running
of the Indianapolis 500.
I came into this month
really hoping that we'd have
a new story to talk about,
after what happened last year,
and I think we did it.
I can't believe it.
I'm honestly, I'm kind of
at a loss for words.
Which as you know
is rare for me.
We're very lucky
as IndyCar drivers
to know that we have
that safety team at all races.
There's no other series
on earth that operates
with that kind of program.
And all these people have
massive amounts of experience.
Not only in medical,
in EMT, things like that,
but at the racetrack,
doing this particular job.
I mean,
they're all very seasoned,
very experienced.
And there's no doubt that
that played a huge part in
what got me out of that car
in one piece, still breathing.
I don't think
there was anything
they could've done differently
or better or anything.
I think that group performed
at the absolute highest level
that anybody could have
in that situation.
And I'm here
as a result of that.
I think everybody
involved in the extrication
and everything,
from the moment I hit
to the moment I get
to the hospital
they have to be really pleased
with themselves.
Not that they would
say that, you know.
Because they're not like that.
But it was incredible
what they were able to
accomplish in that moment.
It's not an individual pride.
It's the pride that our system
is put together that allows
these results to happen.
You know, when a driver's
seriously injured,
and we can have an effect
on that outcome,
that's what
it's all about, really.
They're all invaluable members
of the safety team,
but our IndyCar team
as a family.
You know, to be
able to look after
each other like that.
We're the luckiest
drivers on earth
to be able to have that
traveling with us
everywhere we go.
There are questions
that very few people
ever have to ask themselves
in their lifetime,
but every IndyCar driver
probably has to ask at least
once in their career.
"What happens
when I hit a wall
at 200 miles per hour?
What will the forces
more than 100 times of
the Earth's gravity feel like
when it compresses my body?
Who will come for me?
Who will help me?"
....
waiting patiently in trucks,
any number of ways.
And they're the first
to arrive on the scene
when this happens.
IndyCar is unique
in the motorsports world
in that they are
one of the few racing series
that support a dedicated
safety team that travels
to all of the races.
We're all firefighters,
paramedics on the trucks.
We have three trucks,
four guys on each truck.
There's an incident
command person,
or the crew leader,
there's a paramedic,
and then
we have two firefighters
that sit in the back seats.
Their responsibility is
the seat they're sitting in.
So the driver
is the crew leader,
front seat's the paramedic,
firefighter one
sits behind the paramedic,
firefighter two
sits behind the driver.
Safety team manager, Mike Yates
and crew leader, Mike Kareya
are veteran members
of the Holmatro safety team.
Much of their work begins
before a car even sets
a tire on the track.
Usually, it's the day before
the activity starts
on the weekend.
Mike and I will come
to the track in the morning.
Try to do a couple of laps
around the track, just to see
if there's anything different
from what we've done from
last year to this year.
There's changes
that have to be made
a lot of times,
but they're small,
and they can be handled
before the weekend starts.
Our trucks themselves,
the way they're hauled now,
they're on an open hauler
So we have to take all of
that stuff out of the trucks
and set the trucks up.
That takes another two
or three hours usually.
We have a 40-gallon tank
of water in our truck.
This is our hose,
it's operated by
nitrogen pressure.
This is our IndyCar starter.
If the car stalls
we use these
to restart the car
and send him on his way.
It's what the teams use
when they're in the pits,
starting their cars.
This is just
Oil-Dri containers.
We get oil on the track,
we just put this down
and brush that oil
till we get
racing conditions again.
This is lifting harnesses
for the cars.
This is what we pull out...
We have an incident on
the track, or a car blows apart
or we can't pull it in.
These are all used
to keep the driver...
We get the driver out of
the car in a safe manner,
not dragging out
any problems with him.
This is the AP units
for the Holmatro tools,
they're electric.
Got the core technology
on them.
This one's hooked up
to the cutter.
The other APU,
it's hooked up
to our spreader,
so if we have to spread
the compartment of the car
and get some intrusion,
in the car with a driver
to get him out.
We'll put those in there
and spread the cockpit
of the car out.
Every track on
the IndyCar schedule
already has
a team of firefighters,
paramedics and doctors,
who manage safety at
the individual tracks.
working with local
safety teams is
an essential part of the job
I usually like to have
anywhere from three
to four local trucks.
And that's in combination
with our three trucks.
Most of the time,
or if not always,
they've been around
their race track
for a long time.
So I take as much information
from them as they get from me.
And so what we do
is we have safety
meetings every day
and explain to them what
their responsibilities will be.
We do not dispatch on sight.
We do want to dispatch
from Control.
Make sure they
tell you when to go.
They got a pretty good
sight lines here, so they
can get you out there safely.
But we want you
to get out there
as quickly as we can
'cause we want somebody
making sure that
the driver is okay.
When a crash happens,
the safety team functions
under a system of
procedures and protocols
that dictates the role
every team member
plays on the track.
Our dispatcher's been
with us for a while.
His name's Jim Norman.
And he's up in the tower,
he can see everything
that's going on.
He'll call the triple yellow.
Yellow flags.
Yellow flags.
Proceed with caution.
It's too close.
Proceed with caution.
It's too close.
There's three different
areas that we came up with.
There's your impact area,
where the car makes
impact with the wall.
There's where the car
comes to rest.
And then you have
a debris field
between those two.
So those are three areas
you need to
address immediately.
The truck that's
closest to the car
would go to the car.
The truck that's going
to the impact point will
stop at the impact point.
The paramedic goes
straight to the driver
to see if he's injured,
and if so,
what type of injury.
Are we gonna be able
to send him standing up
and ambulatory,
or are we gonna have to
extract him from the car,
those sorts of decisions.
Firefighter one
always comes off with a
pressurized water container.
Firefighter two comes off
with a five-gallon Oil-Dri
container.
It's got Oil-Dri in it.
His job, if they
broke their oil line,
he dams up the oil,
keeping it contained
to the car
as tightly as he can.
The incident commander,
the crew leader
gets out of the car,
kind of sizes up the scene
pretty quickly.
Cause while we're doing'
all this, television is wanting
to know when we're going green,
fire control is the same.
At the impact point,
the crew leader inspects
the damage to the wall,
the facility, the track,
the fence.
If there's any damage
to any of these
he can call in
the local resources and
the track restoration people
to fix whatever
needs to be fixed,
so we can continue racing.
The third truck in,
that's usually
our clean-up truck.
And it will drop its
three-man crew off
at the race car.
If they don't need any help,
those three guys will
start walking back up
towards the impact point
on the racetrack,
cleaning debris.
The other two guys that
are on the impact point truck,
they will start walking
towards the race car,
picking up debris.
Then when those people meet,
they turn around
and they walk back to
their respective trucks.
Our doctors ride
in a separate truck.
And that's our 1200 car.
It's an SUV type vehicle.
When we're outside of
the State of Indiana,
we'll do basic life-support.
If there's any
advanced life-support
that has to be done,
we defer to
the local paramedics
that work on the ambulances
and the rescue vehicles
that are on the scene with us.
Then they function under
their local medical director,
which is there on the scene.
We work really well together
with all the tracks.
There's a respect
we gain from each other
when we're there.
So we try to work as closely
with those folks as we can.
The benefit is
there's a core group of guys,
we work together
every weekend.
The drivers know who we are.
They feel comfortable
about looking up and seeing
somebody that they know.
When a crash occurs,
the safety team
are the first responders
who arrive to
safeguard the driver
before turning their attention
to packaging up damaged cars
and cleaning the track,
so racing can resume.
This looks like the end
of the incident.
But in IndyCar,
these are just the first steps
in a cascade of analyses
that take place
after an accident.
Jeff Horton, an engineer
by training, leads a group
for IndyCar
that analyzes
on-track accidents.
My main role
is accident investigation.
Once Mike Yates' team
gets done with it
on the racetrack,
they package it up,
put it on a wrecker
and it comes back to us.
That's when we do
an investigation of it.
Regardless of the damage
or whether there was
an injury or not,
we record as much information
as we can about that accident.
And we take
pictures of the car,
so we understand the damage.
I take pictures for
the database that we keep
on all the accidents.
Specifically, what I'm doing
is not only taking pictures
of the current damage,
but also damage that
we can't necessarily see.
Just so that we can keep
a complete database
on all the parts.
And then I download
the crash box itself.
Every IndyCar
contains a crash recorder
that provides data which
the accident investigation
group can analyze immediately.
in a mobile office
that travels to every race.
We've got about six pages
of graphs and summary data.
And that includes
the impact levels
from the car,
and the driver's
ear accelerometer, which
they wear in their ears.
So these are the custom
ear sensors that we make
for every driver.
There's an electronics package
which consists of
three accelerometers
which measures each
of the three axes.
So we've got forward,
backward, left, right,
up and down,
the force that's acted
on the driver's head,
and then the little red thing
you can see is a covering
for the speaker
that you use to hear
and communicate
from the team's radio.
So this is a custom piece,
the mold itself is all
custom to each driver.
These are 100 percent
made inside IndyCar.
The data is captured
in the crash box itself.
So it's perfectly lined up with
the accelerations of the car.
So this is our one interface
to the drivers
to tell what
they're going through
during an accident.
The crash box tells us
what the car is going through
and then the ear
accelerometers tell us what
the driver's going through.
During an IndyCar
qualifying session,
driver Charlie Kimball
makes hard contact
with the SAFER Barrier
that momentarily lifts
his car off the track.
Charlie was fortunate enough
to walk away from the crash
while the accident
investigation team steps in
to perform an analysis
of the impact.
Since we have all three axes,
this is the first hit.
So based on the polarities,
so we've got a left-rear...
Left-front hit,
excuse me.
So we know when
the longitudinal forces
are negative that's front.
And we know that the lateral,
when it's negative, that's
the left side of the car.
So we know that
he hit left-front.
So we're looking at a 40G
and an 85G hit.
The actual result of that
when you add those together
was 93Gs.
One of the major
innovations from IndyCar
is the SAFER Barrier.
A wall of foam and steel tubing
that rings the outside
of the track
and absorbs some of
the high-G impact
from an accident.
At places like Indianapolis,
where the speeds are up
in the angles that they hit,
typically, it attenuates
down to about a 60G pulse.
Which is dramatic,
'cause a bare concrete wall
would have been
over 100 in the past.
So they do a very good
job of attenuating.
But with the damage
that was done to that car,
again, you're talking
well over 100Gs
and a concrete wall
versus the SAFER walls.
We're lucky that
during a sanctioned event,
which means either
a race weekend or an open test,
we have a full selection
of cameras we can use.
And that's invaluable
when you're looking
at replaying an accident.
'Cause you're gonna
actually see what happened.
There were two initial hits,
the big one
we just talked about.
There is another one,
probably as the car
spun around
and then there was a time
he was in the air and
not really hitting anything,
and that's about 1.4 seconds.
So there's one, two,
the small one, three,
four, five, six, seven.
There's basically
ten substantial hits.
His very first hit
all happened in a time frame
of probably 30 milliseconds.
It's a fairly wide impact
in our world,
so he's gonna feel that.
But a lot of times now,
we can tell from that
that there's a probability
that there's an injury
or there's a potential
for an injury, and sometimes
it doesn't show up.
So, like, with Charlie,
I'll wait 48 hours
and call him.
For many, many years now
Dr. Trammell has been
involved with us.
The two of us together
work very well.
He's an orthopedic surgeon
with a big mechanical
background.
I'm an engineer that
understands the cars
very, very well.
So we can look
at both sides of
the kinematics of a crash.
We can look at the car
and what went on with that
and Dr. Trammell can
tell us about the body
and what we would need to do
to prevent those injuries.
The biggest thing is
we've had so many
accidents over time
that you can predict
a probability of a particular
kind of injury from
the crash pulse.
So for example, if we have
a 90G vertical crash pulse,
that's just a big spike
in the bottom of the car,
with enough width,
that's predictive
of a spine fracture.
During the final lap
of a race in Houston,
driver Dario Franchitti
suffered spinal injuries
and a concussion
in a violent crash
that caused him to
retire from racing.
We understand a lot of
the loading levels that
are potential to cause injury.
Now, most of the time
a driver will feel that
when he gets out
and we especially look
at the head Gs
and then any vertical Gs,
and if there's
any markers in the data,
which means high level Gs
we calculate what we call
a HIC value, which stands
for Head Injury Criterion.
Then I let the nurses
and the doctors know,
"Hey, pretty big head hit."
So the data always gets
looked at real quick.
The doctors need that
information, we get it
to them as quick as we can.
All of this
graphing, logging,
and data collection
serves a very immediate
need to spot any
potential health risks
to the drivers
involved in a crash.
But it also serves
a much bigger purpose
in the goal to expand
IndyCar safety.
The rest of the year,
we do a lot of research.
Which includes sled testing,
drop-tower testing,
and things like that,
so it's a complete
closed-loop system,
where what we learn
at the racetrack
we can go in and make
improvements to the cars,
whether it's new seats,
new headrests,
safety devices for the drivers.
Then they will
implement them into the rules
in the years to come
as soon as we get them ready
and make sure they're
the right thing to do.
My memory kind of fades out
about the start of that lap.
Kicks back in, you know,
waking up in ICU,
on a ventilator.
At the time I had
absolutely no memory
of how I got there.
Leading up to
the 99th running of
the Indianapolis 500,
the safety team
and IndyCar officials
were focused on issues
that were causing drivers
to get airborne
in single car crashes
during practice.
Fortunately, there were
no major injuries
from the accidents.
And IndyCar moved quickly
to implement changes
to protect driver safety.
By the final practice session,
it looked like
a solution had been found.
But the safety team
is always ready when
the unforeseen happens.
So we were out there,
it was early in the session,
I think maybe an hour in,
and I was running
around there
just trying to do some
draft practice, and you know,
work on the race car.
The accident all started when
the right front rocker failed.
And that's a very,
very rare failure.
I've seen cars hit the wall
very hard and the rockers
are still fine.
That's just not a piece
that, traditionally,
has an issue.
Oh, and a hard contact!
James Hinchcliffe.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
we were dispatched.
It was up on the north end,
in turn three,
coming out of three and four,
and we were stationed
in one and two.
When Safety 3 got to the car,
the crew leader on that vehicle
called a Code zero-five.
Our codes go 01
as an ambulatory driver,
uninjured.
Code zero-two is orthopedic,
zero-three is a change
of level of consciousness,
like a concussion.
Five is like a multi-systems
life threat.
When we got that code,
we went on instead of
the impact point,
we went on down to the scene.
When I got there, of course,
we were having trouble
getting him up out of his seat.
Basically,
the piece of suspension,
it went in the tub end,
entered me right under
my, kind of, right butt cheek.
And it came out up around
my left hip.
And so the biggest amount
of damage was actually
through my left glute,
there was essentially
a couple of inch diameter
metal rod
that went straight
through the muscle
of my left glute.
I couldn't get my fingers
between his hips and the seat,
so we figured that
the tub was compressed.
And we got the spreaders
and put them down in
and spread the tub.
We heard the tub pop
a couple of times,
and then it became loose.
They realized
that there was no way
to get me out of the car
with that piece of suspension
still in me.
They apparently looked at me
and said,
"All right,
here's the situation.
We need to pull you
out of the car
and once we start,
we're not stopping until
you're out of this car.
So you can kick and you can
scream and you can swear,
you can do whatever you want.
But once we start pulling,
we're not stopping
until you are off this piece
and out of this car."
The impalement that
he had from the suspension
created some issues
with bleeding.
They got me into the ambulance
and immediately
were just trying
to pack the wounds and try
and stop the bleeding.
We stopped by the Care Center
and picked up the surgeon.
You know, if you've got
a driver that's critically
injured in your ambulance,
and you're headed
to the hospital.
And that surgeon is
sitting there next to you,
he sees what you're doing
and the problems
that you're having.
So he's got
a pretty good idea
what he's gonna have to do
when this driver gets to him.
And when we got
to Methodist,
it was almost immediately,
he went straight
to the shock room
and then
straight up to surgery.
I had two operations.
One to take care of
the artery that was hit
as the suspension
went through me.
It hit my femoral artery,
and you know, bleeding out
was the big worry of that day.
I mean, when I think about
the idea of a piece of metal
that size
going through my body
at that place,
and literally,
all that was hit was muscle,
and no organs, nothing else.
I mean, the artery, yeah,
but that could've just
been so much worse.
Oh, and a hard contact!
James Hinchcliffe.
My involvement would've been
the same as it would've been
for any other accident.
The race car was packaged up,
put on a wrecker
and brought back to me.
Because of that level
of that injury, at the time,
we took that back
to a secure area.
It was quite evident
from the video we saw
that it looked like
a suspension failure
that caused him to, basically,
drive directly into the wall.
We took a quick look
at the failure,
that had actually happened.
We wanted to make sure
we weren't gonna see that
same type of failure,
or at least put
another driver through that.
So, immediately,
that was our focus there.
As the parts came back,
we laid them out.
We do very much like airplane
reconstruction sometimes,
where we lay the parts out
relative to the top.
The analysis that was done
on the suspension failure
and some of
the suspension piece
that broke into car,
some changes have
been made to that
to make it safer.
By the next day, I think,
they had already
designed a piece to add
to the lower wishbones,
that if it were to
snap off its pickup point
and not bend
it would slide along the tub
rather than be forced into it.
So there were things,
literally within 24 hours
that the series had
implemented to make sure
it didn't happen again.
Mike sat with me
the next day and we
went through everything.
We went through
the crash loads and the video,
the post-accident pictures.
One of the challenges
of that accident
was the way the suspension
piece had come through the tub,
through the seat
so they didn't know
why he was hung up.
So the goal is to try to
understand if we could
develop new tools
to help them either chop in
to the side of the tub,
spread the tub apart,
something beyond the tools
they had today
to make that analysis
easier and quicker.
We never quit thinking,
especially when drivers
have been injured.
It's still ongoing,
even after all this time.
We're still looking at ways,
whether it's extrication
or to make the car safer.
So there's been a lot
of changes that came
out of that accident.
Between the people that
showed up at the car first,
the experience they had,
the decisions they made,
you know, in that
short period of time,
the hospital staff
and the quality of hospital
that I ended up at,
I mean,
any one of those things
not being in place...
Who knows?
Even as a little kid,
when I used to watch
the IndyCar races,
for me,
what fascinated me
apart from the racing
and the technology
and the speed was
how well those people
organize having their
own hospital on site,
with their own doctors
and people that understand
about the job.
People don't realize
how much IndyCar did
for safety in racing.
IndyCar works hard
to improve driver safety
with a team of safety workers,
doctors, and engineers.
But they also have an open
channel of communication
with the people who have
the most to gain or lose
on the track.
I'm the president
of the driver's association.
Our connection with IndyCar
is extremely open.
So it's just pick up
the phone and say,
"We have an issue."
We'll have a drivers meeting
or we'll have an email
that we say,
"Hey, this is a concern.
Somebody just
put a concern out."
We discuss between us
how we are gonna put this to
IndyCar so they can understand.
I'm the drivers'
medical advocate.
The Professional Drivers
Association is really just
a communications network
of the current drivers.
The ultimate function
is to be able to foresee
and anticipate
circumstances that could
produce injury and try and
prevent them before they occur.
We found that
if drivers had questions,
whether it was
head-rest padding,
seat-belt fit, either them
or their team managers
would come see us
and ask us questions.
It's very rewarding when
they come to ask you,
"What should I do
in a safety situation?"
We travel together, so we're
with them, every weekend
we're on the road.
It's not uncommon for us
to be working on the car
after the accident situation,
where we're cataloging,
and the driver's been released
and walks back up.
Depending on what it is,
I'll talk to him and see
what they went through.
It's always good having
first-hand information,
see it they hurt anywhere.
So they're always around,
we're always talking to them.
It's always a development.
And you kind of
pin-point what's important
for the series,
what's important for safety,
for us, for the fans.
Every move we make in IndyCar,
it's very well thought of.
I'm not saying we're gonna
get it right all the time.
But it's not like somebody
just came up and said,
"We need to put this there."
Then we're being irresponsible.
But we're not gonna
get it right all the time.
We give an annual presentation
to the drivers.
My opening statement
is always,
"If you get hurt,
I take it very personally.
If you get hurt,
I feel like I've failed you
in some way
because we didn't anticipate
your situation, your injury
and prevent it.
However, if you get hurt
because you didn't do something
that we told you to do,
because we knew it would
protect you from this injury,
I take that equally
as personally,
and I will be in your face."
After a devastating crash,
fast action from the IndyCar
safety team and doctors
saved James Hinchcliffe
from what could've been
a fatal accident.
In hospital, James started
down the road to recovery.
The injuries were largely
soft tissue damage
through my legs
and pelvic region.
Unfortunately,
the best thing that
you can do for that
for a certain amount of time
is nothing.
As a competitive person,
you wanna push,
you wanna get better
as fast as possible, right?
And they're like,
"No, that's great.
But to do that
we need you to do nothing."
And that was so hard for me
to kind of wrap my head around.
You want to be doing
as much as possible
to get better.
And then once I was cleared
to sort of start moving again,
it started off with,
you know, just simple
things like walking.
I would be given
a step counter
and told, "All right,
this day you're allowed to do
this many steps, no more.
And the next day
you can do this many steps
and no more."
So I would do laps
around my couch
with my pedometer
until I hit my steps.
And then I'd go sit back down.
When you're sitting down,
basically, for two months,
you lose a lot of muscle
and you lose a lot
of flexibility.
Honestly, getting the
flexibility back and some of
the stretching that took place
was some of the most painful
part of the rehab
because, you know,
you have all these muscles
and all this tissue
that's been damaged
and freshly repaired.
Now you're trying to
stretch it out for
the first time.
Man, there were some times
there where it was just
pure agony.
First time you're
picking up dumbbells,
and they're five pounds.
My trainer's like,
"All right, take it easy."
I'm like, "What?"
Again, that's part
of the mental side of
that kind of rehabilitation.
As much as you want to push,
you need to know
where that limit is
and finding that point
was really challenging.
The other thing that wasn't
as widely reported
was I actually had
quite a bit of damage
to my neck.
And obviously,
that's a pretty big part
of driving a race car,
you need to have a strong neck.
And for a long time
that's what worried me,
was that that wasn't
going to be good enough
ever again
for me to drive a car
or road course.
I stopped shaving,
and you know, my beard kinda
took on a life of its own,
and it was sort of a thing
there for a while,
but the fact of the matter
is I stopped shaving
'cause I didn't wanna see
what I looked like.
Because I'd lost
so much weight.
Just muscle atrophy,
and not being able
to eat, really, at first.
It is a really
helpless feeling,
in a sense, you know.
I mean, it's all I know.
Like, racing is not a job,
it's a life.
The harder part was knowing
that I was in no condition
to be at the track.
You know, it's one thing
to not be there,
but it's another thing
to know that
even if you have
the opportunity to be there,
you couldn't do it.
I could barely sit on a couch,
never mind the thought of being
tossed around in an IndyCar.
The support from everybody
that poured in after that...
It was the most
incredible part of this
entire experience, really.
And there's no doubt that
seeing all that support
from everybody,
it really helped
on the bad days.
I remember when I got
to Toronto, it was my first
time back at the track.
And I saw Mike.
I mean, I nearly
broke into tears.
I just hugged him.
It was, uh...
That was a pretty
emotional moment.
There's no words, you know.
I don't know...
I'm usually
pretty good at talking.
I think anybody who knows me
well will admit that,
but there was
just nothing to say.
I had no vocabulary
to express how I felt,
and the gratitude
and the appreciation,
and all that.
So it was literally just
a whole lot of hugs
and almost tears kinda thing,
standing in the middle
of the racetrack, and it's...
What's so awesome about them
is none of them are looking
for any accolades,
or, you know,
recognition in any sense.
This is just what they do,
you know,
and they care about you
as much as,
you know, as much as
they would family.
Because like I said,
this is a big family.
With the track dormant
in the dead of winter,
the safety team gathers
in Indianapolis
to review the previous
race season and train
for the upcoming season.
We have cameras
in our trucks,
so we can actually watch
safety, too,
pull up and see exactly
what they're doing
at a race car,
whether they're extracting
the driver or how bad it is.
That'll mentally prepare us
for what we have to do
once we get there to help.
At this point,
we've got a pretty good
action circle going here.
If Safety 3 gets
to the car first,
his job is to
secure the scene,
pass on information
to the next truck in,
and make sure they know
what's going on.
The thing is,
what you have to do
when someone is injured,
you have to critique that,
you have to download
everything you did
and look at it, and,
"Can I improve the outcome
of what happened to them
in that accident
the next time?"
After reviewing
and discussing a series
of on-track incidents,
the safety team
moves to a workshop
for training,
and to try new tools
provided by the safety team's
sponsor, Holmatro.
What we're gonna do today
is use the hydraulics
up here by the car.
We're gonna use the saw blade
that he's got back here
and we're just gonna try
to cut down to the floor.
Then again, we're gonna
take our spreaders
and try to get this down
and break it down
to the floor,
and just see how quickly
we can do that.
We're looking at
trying to design a tool
that would make it
a lot easier for us to access
where we needed access.
We work with
our technical department,
brainstorm and put
these things together,
present this thing to
Holmatro engineers to help us
develop this tool
that's needed.
You can imagine what
the inside of an IndyCar,
the footbox looks like.
If you see the outside
you know how small it is.
Well,
it's even smaller inside.
We take the nose off a car,
we can get down in there
and actually,
if they're tangled up,
we can use these cutters
in there.
You could always improve
on what you do,
that's why we train.
It is to get better
and faster at what you do
and more efficiently.
Especially working with
these type of cars,
the space you
have to work with
is very confined.
And working in
that confined space,
it's a little technical stuff,
getting the drivers out
sometimes, you gotta take
the head surrounds out,
gotta take
the steering wheel out,
we train on that
so we know how to
do it very efficiently.
Responding to
accidents and driver injuries
on the track
is the main purpose
of the IndyCar safety team.
But they also function
in many different capacities
during a race.
On a road and street
course, we're like
an over-the-wall crew.
Only we work for
every team out there.
We carry IndyCar starters,
we carry the, you know,
quick jacks,
and we get to a car,
we might have to pull
it out by the tires,
get it turned around,
get it sent on its way.
It's a matter of
just sorting out
what's in front of you.
Everybody thinks
that they should be
the first one started.
We'll take a verbal beating
all day long,
it doesn't hurt us.
Now, if their arguing
keeps us from
doing our job,
and it's costing us time
on the racetrack,
we'll kind of
push back a little bit,
but in order to have
the personality to get out
and drive these cars,
they're pretty
type A personalities anyway.
And then if you add fuel
to the fire by pushing on that,
make a bad situation worse.
I enjoy motorsports,
I enjoy being
at the racetrack.
I enjoy all the stuff
in between.
I don't necessarily
enjoy the crashes,
But that's why we're here,
is for that.
And we're here to take
care of the drivers
and get them back on the track
as quickly as possible.
Ninety nine percent
of the time, it's fun.
You get that one percent
of the time where it's
not so fun.
The safety crew
is there to ensure
the safety of the drivers.
But there are risks to
working on a track with cars
that weigh 1,500 pounds
and behind a pace car,
are often traveling
80 miles an hour.
There's rules that
they have to slow down.
And the crew leaders,
especially, will get
on the radio
and they will tell
the race director, they'll call
that team and let them know,
"Hey, heads up
because next time
could be a penalty."
The biggest danger
is something that's
out of their control.
'Cause where there's
been a crash,
you've probably got oil,
you've probably got debris.
So they could pop a tire
when you're loaded into a turn
and you're working
in that turn.
During a race
in Kentucky,
a tire blew on driver
Danica Patrick's car
that sent her spinning,
and narrowly missing
a safety truck.
I had no clue as to
why she didn't hit anything.
Talked to the guys,
they just heard a pop.
And they looked
in the rear-view mirror
and didn't see anything
until she hit the side.
Those are things that
I guess, you've got
no control over 'em.
For the most part,
though, the guys have
been firefighters,
and paramedics,
rescue people all their life.
There's a certain amount
of risk that you're
going to accept
because that's what
we've done all our lives.
Unnecessary risk
is unacceptable,
but there's a risk there that
we're willing to take,
just to make sure these guys
in those cars are okay.
And what about
another big risk
the safety crew faces?
Every now and then,
we don't get a porta potty
by our station.
Sitting for hours
in hot trucks, far away from
the track facilities,
there are certain needs
that can't be ignored.
You gotta go, you gotta go.
We gotta stay hydrated,
so part of staying hydrated
is going.
It's frustrating sometimes.
But you gotta go,
you gotta go.
The safety crew
could be called into action
any time during a race.
Is it possible that they
could literally be caught
with their pants down?
Absolutely. You have to
hustle on out.
That's the bad part,
is if you're caught going,
you just gotta
zip it up and go.
For IndyCar,
the concern for driver safety
doesn't end when
the cars leave the track.
Safety is a year-round
undertaking that involves
research projects
that extend
through the off season.
All of our data, of course,
is in the database,
and that gives us
the accidents to go look at
and drill in deeper
when we do our research
during the winter.
IndyCar has been
incredibly good
about responding to
need for safety improvements.
Any time anybody's injured,
the primary focus is,
"Why did this happen?
What would it take to lessen
the forces below the threshold
of human failure?
When does a bone break?
It's a bio-material
and has a threshold.
Got some elasticity,
it'll bend a little bit
before it breaks.
We do sled testing.
We do not use a real car.
That would be too expensive.
We have what we call
a sled buck,
which looks like a metal
piping structure
that simulates what
a car and driver's
seating area is.
It allows us, quickly,
to change foam materials,
or any type of energy-
resourceful materials.
We have our own
crash test dummy
called The Thor.
Our Thor dummy is
more biofidelic.
So he's got a little
different neck, he's got
quite a bit different spine
and we can actually
articulate him.
Our IndyCar drivers sit at
about a 45 degree angle.
So the modifications we've
made to him, we can
articulate him into
a cockpit seating area,
just like one of our drivers.
Some of the
first tests we did,
we properly broke him.
He was made for
the automotive world,
which they typically test,
we've all heard of
bumper tests.
20Gs, 25Gs at the most.
Our test pulse was
a 70G pulse.
When it hit, he ramped up
out of the car
and we promptly broke
what is his clavicle.
Because of the loading.
The dummy had never
seen a load like that.
So it was easy for us
to go in and modify it.
We've had a series of crashes
that have resulted in
failure of the side of the tub.
And it's
a step-wise occurrence.
You have a minor failure,
the driver hits the side
of the tub a little bit,
and he's sore,
out of breath.
And the next step along the way
is where you have
a little bit more severe,
where they break their pelvis,
break a hip.
Something in that nature.
But each time there,
you're getting a crash pulse
you know how much force
it takes to fracture the tub.
Then you know how much
more force it takes to
fracture the driver.
Then you have one
where the driver's
seriously injured
and you've got
a much higher force.
But got a graph now,
you got an array
and you can say,
"Well, this is the trend
and this is where we're going."
And now with three points,
you can start speculating
what the pulse graph
would look like.
We got a new chassis in 2012.
We saw that
as a reset point.
We started looking at drivers
and injuries prior
to the 2012 car.
Every one of them, to a tee,
it didn't matter how tall
or short they were,
had seats that were very thin.
They all felt like they wanted
to sit on the floor of the car
They'd want to sit
right on the carbon fiber
on the floor of the car.
So a driver's seat, typically,
would have zero foam
under their butt.
And it takes a certain
amount of energy
for our average
160-pound driver
to absorb that.
With the advent of our
2012 car, we were actually
able to put foam in the car
before the driver
ever took his seat.
So we now have a three-inch
piece of EPP foam
behind their back,
and we have 1.2 inches
under their butt.
And that's one of the things
that have made this car so safe
when it comes to accidents.
Can we evolve a car that has
better driver protection than
what we have now?
We'll always be
able to do that.
There'll always be something
that you can do better.
But you don't know that
when you're do it
until they figure out
another way to crash it.
The thing that
I just really don't like
to hear at a racetrack is,
"That'll never happen."
Because I can guarantee you,
it will. It just hasn't
happened yet.
If you can think of it,
it's gonna happen.
We had a big
road course headrest change
we did two years ago.
There was an accident
in Baltimore,
involving Scott Dixon
and Will Power.
It was a really small accident.
It was on a restart, I believe.
We had heard from Scott
the week after,
that he had
a pretty good headache
from that.
It was only like a 10G,
10-15G hit.
We don't typically raise
our eyebrows anymore
unless it's a 50G
and above hit. Thankfully.
So, we looked at
this headrest and from
the in-car camera and stuff
and what Scott went through,
and what ended up happening.
He had severe vibration.
So when you look at the in-car
his head rattled back and forth
between the headrest.
And what we found out,
talking to the drivers
after this
is that a lot of
the street course,
it was just rough.
Their heads banging around,
they were having headaches
and stuff after the race.
It was due to the EPP foam
that was there.
It was doing its job
on big impacts,
the 50G impacts.
But all of a sudden,
we had a new data point,
where it wasn't working
at the low-G impact.
We were able to take
the crash box data,
go up to the crash sled
that we use up in Westfield,
and we were actually able to
duplicate exactly what Scott's
head went through on the sled.
We were able to run
all these materials
on the headrest
and we took over 40Gs
of that impact level
out of that type of accident.
Knock on wood,
we've pretty much
eliminated that now.
And that all came
from an accident analysis,
turned it to the sled,
proofed the information
and proofed the materials.
In a true impact situation,
our headrest does
all the work.
We always say,
"We're trying to put
ourselves out of business."
The day we quit
hurting drivers, we're done.
We've got a focus,
we know what our target is,
and we've got good research
money to do it, we've been
able to do it over the years.
My third question
when I woke up in ICU
was, "When can I
get back in a car?"
Here I am,
laying in hospital,
can't speak,
five machines hooked up to me.
Barely made it through
the last 24 hours,
and my third question was,
"When can I get back into
the machine that put me here?"
I had moments over
the next couple of months
whether I thought
I'd be able to.
But never once did I ever waver
on whether or not I wanted to.
After suffering
severe injuries,
in an accident during
Indianapolis 500 practice,
James Hinchcliffe recovered
during the remainder
of the IndyCar season
and returned to racing
the following year.
You've got this balance,
right, you know,
you're a competitor,
and you're like,
"No matter what
I'm gonna get back."
But there's always that
five percent in your brain
that's like,
"Yeah, but what if that
never happens again?
What if you can't
do this ever again?"
And that was like terrifying.
And I don't know if that
adds more motivation to get
better or what,
but there were
definitely times where
standing in the shower,
and I can't even,
like, lift my head up
'cause my neck's in
so much pain
it's stuck in this position.
I'm like, "Well, you can't
drive a race car doing this."
And so, there were definitely
days where it was just
really a challenge
to kind of accept
where I was and understand
where I was going.
James' real victory came
one year after his accident
when he returned to
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
to become the fastest car
on track,
and take the pole position
for the 100th running
of the Indianapolis 500.
I came into this month
really hoping that we'd have
a new story to talk about,
after what happened last year,
and I think we did it.
I can't believe it.
I'm honestly, I'm kind of
at a loss for words.
Which as you know
is rare for me.
We're very lucky
as IndyCar drivers
to know that we have
that safety team at all races.
There's no other series
on earth that operates
with that kind of program.
And all these people have
massive amounts of experience.
Not only in medical,
in EMT, things like that,
but at the racetrack,
doing this particular job.
I mean,
they're all very seasoned,
very experienced.
And there's no doubt that
that played a huge part in
what got me out of that car
in one piece, still breathing.
I don't think
there was anything
they could've done differently
or better or anything.
I think that group performed
at the absolute highest level
that anybody could have
in that situation.
And I'm here
as a result of that.
I think everybody
involved in the extrication
and everything,
from the moment I hit
to the moment I get
to the hospital
they have to be really pleased
with themselves.
Not that they would
say that, you know.
Because they're not like that.
But it was incredible
what they were able to
accomplish in that moment.
It's not an individual pride.
It's the pride that our system
is put together that allows
these results to happen.
You know, when a driver's
seriously injured,
and we can have an effect
on that outcome,
that's what
it's all about, really.
They're all invaluable members
of the safety team,
but our IndyCar team
as a family.
You know, to be
able to look after
each other like that.
We're the luckiest
drivers on earth
to be able to have that
traveling with us
everywhere we go.