TRACK INCIDENT RESPONSE: CRASH, FIRE AND DRIVER EXTRACTION

The Technique

1. Do not approach until the track is stopped and you know it. Cars on a drift circuit arrive fast, sideways, and with poor visibility through smoke and tyre haze, so the first casualty at a crash scene is often the person who ran to help. Wait for the session to be red flagged or otherwise stopped, and confirm it with your own eyes rather than assuming. Approach from a direction other drivers can see, never around a blind wall or through a smoke cloud, and never stand in the run off line where a second car would go. Wear high visibility clothing and gloves. As you close in, read the scene: is the car on its wheels, on its side, against a barrier, is there smoke, is fluid running, is the engine still turning over, is anyone already out of the car and wandering. Say what you find out loud so the rest of the group hears it and so the person calling for help has something accurate to say.
2. Treat fire as the decision that overrides everything else, and be honest about what an extinguisher does. Look for smoke colour and location, flame under the bonnet or around the fuel system, and fuel pooling under the car. If the car has an onboard suppression system, its external pull handle is usually marked near the base of the windscreen or a door pillar, so learn where it lives on the cars in your group before the day starts. With a hand held extinguisher, pull the pin, aim at the base of the flame rather than the smoke, squeeze, and sweep. Then understand the reality: a typical hand held unit gives you seconds, not minutes, and a car fire that is established will not be beaten by one. Do not throw the bonnet open, because that feeds the fire air. Discharge through the gap at the front of the bonnet or through the wheel arch. Stay upwind, out of the smoke, which is toxic. And accept the primary rule that if there is fire that you cannot immediately knock down, getting the driver out beats every other consideration, including a possible spinal injury.
3. Isolate the electrics, and stop short of your limits with hybrids and electric vehicles. Most competition prepared cars have an external master cut off switch, commonly marked with a blue triangle carrying a red spark, and turning it off removes power to fuel pumps and ignition. Use it. On a road registered car, if the ignition is accessible and reachable without contorting the driver, turn the key off. For hybrid and electric vehicles the rules change and your role gets smaller. Orange cabling is high voltage and you do not touch it, cut it, or lean on it, and you do not go poking around a damaged battery pack. A damaged pack can heat up, vent smoke with a sharp smell, and catch fire, sometimes long after the crash and sometimes more than once. If you see smoke or venting from under an electric car, your job is to get people back to a safe distance, keep them there, and tell emergency services it is an electric vehicle when you call. Fighting a battery fire is a fire brigade task with fire brigade water volumes and it is nowhere near lay scope.
4. Understand the primary rule: a conscious driver stays in the car. Unless there is fire, immediate danger of being struck, or a threat to their airway or breathing, leave a belted, conscious driver where they are and wait for people with proper equipment. The seat, harness and cage are holding them in a good position, and a crash hard enough to hurt them is hard enough to have injured a spine you cannot see. Getting a driver out badly is one of the few ways a bystander can turn a survivable injury into a permanent one. So talk to them through the window instead. Tell them not to move and not to try to get out. Get their name and use it. Open the visor so you can see them breathing and hear them speak. Ask what hurts, whether they can feel and move their hands and feet, and whether they have neck or back pain. Keep talking, keep them still, and let the officials and ambulance crew do the extraction.
5. Leave the helmet on. A helmet is removed only when it prevents you managing the airway or you need to start CPR, and never simply to see the driver's face or make them comfortable. If it genuinely must come off, it is a two person job and you should have practised it. Release the head and neck restraint tether and the chin strap first, and take out glasses or a neck brace if fitted. The first person kneels behind or above the head and holds the head and neck still and in line with the body, gripping under the jaw and the base of the skull. The second person spreads the sides of the helmet outward and eases it off in stages, tilting it back to clear the nose and then forward to clear the back of the head, moving slowly and stopping if it binds. As the helmet leaves, the second person takes over holding the head so support is never lost. Many modern helmets have emergency cheek pad release tabs, which make this far safer, so find out whether the helmets in your group have them and how they work while everyone is calm.
6. Release a harness under load only with the driver supported. If a car is on its side or roof, the driver's whole weight is hanging on the belts, and the classic mistake is to hit the release and drop them onto their head and neck. Do not touch the buckle until you have enough people in position to take the weight, you have agreed who holds the head, and you have agreed where the driver is going. Brace them first, then release, then lower them as one piece, keeping the head and body in line. Stabilise the car before anyone gets in or under it, because a car on its side will move when weight shifts. If the car is stable, there is no fire, and the driver is conscious, the right answer is usually to support them where they hang, keep the airway clear, and wait for the crash crew rather than attempting a hero extraction with four people and no plan.
7. Handle burns within lay scope and no further. Cool the burn with cool running water for twenty minutes, and it is still worth doing for some hours after the injury if you did not get to it straight away. Take off rings, watches and anything tight before swelling starts, and remove clothing that is not stuck, but leave anything stuck to the skin alone. Do not use ice, do not use butter, creams or ointments, and do not break blisters. Cover loosely with cling film laid on rather than wrapped tight, or a clean non fluffy dressing. Cooling a large burn will chill the person, so keep the rest of them warm while the burn is cooled. Airway burns are the emergency inside the emergency: a hoarse voice, soot around the mouth or nose, singed nasal hair, coughing or noisy breathing after a fire in a confined cockpit all mean call for an ambulance immediately and monitor the airway continuously. Any burn to the face, hands, feet, joints or genitals, any burn bigger than a palm, and any burn on a child goes to hospital.
8. Organise the group before the first session, not after the crash. Private track days often have no marshals, and the group is the response. At the driver briefing, name a response lead for the day and a deputy. Establish who holds current first aid training and put their names on the whiteboard. Agree who calls triple zero, and have that person write down the venue name, the street address, the nearest gate number and a set of coordinates before anyone drives. Nominate someone to open the gate and meet the ambulance, because paramedics losing five minutes at a locked gate is a real and common failure. Agree the stop signal that any person can give to halt the session and make sure everyone understands they will never be criticised for using it. Know where the extinguishers, the first aid kit and the trauma kit are, and check they are charged and in date. Then walk it: point at the gate, point at the kit, point at the person calling. A plan that has only been spoken is not a plan.

Common Mistakes

Running onto a live track towards a crash. Fix: confirm the session is stopped with your own eyes, then approach where other drivers can see you.

• Opening the bonnet to get at an engine fire. Fix: discharge through the bonnet gap or the wheel arch, stay upwind, and expect only seconds of extinguisher.
• Pulling a conscious driver out because it feels like the helpful thing to do. Fix: unless there is fire or immediate danger, they stay belted and still while you talk to them and wait.
• Taking the helmet off to check on someone. Fix: open the visor instead, and only remove for airway or CPR, with two people and in line head support.
• Hitting the harness release with the car on its roof. Fix: support the driver's weight first, agree the plan, then release and lower as one piece.
• Treating a damaged electric or hybrid car like any other crash. Fix: no contact with orange cabling, everyone back from a venting pack, and tell the emergency call taker it is an electric vehicle.

The Drill

Set a car on the paddock with a volunteer belted in and helmeted. Run three scenarios back to back off a single call: driver conscious and no fire, driver conscious with a smoking engine bay, driver unresponsive and not breathing. Standard: the group correctly leaves the driver in the car for scenario one, achieves extinguisher in hand and aimed at the base within thirty seconds for scenario two, and completes a rehearsed two person helmet removal with continuous head support for scenario three. The named caller must recite the venue address, gate and coordinates from memory each time.

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