Is it time for full-time safety crews?

Though I know nothing more of medicinal practice than the occasional turn-your-head-and-cough routine, it seems to me that the more knowledgeable a physician is regarding a particular patient's medical history, the better.

Why?

It saves time, a precious resource in a serious accident. Until a doctor fully understands the victim's current medical routine, personal tendencies and medicinal allergies, no procedures may be performed.

Looking at charts and information logs wastes valuable time. And requesting information from the victim himself is a tall order for someone in the midst of a traumatic situation.

Two weeks ago I was playing softball with some fellow NASCAR media types and took a line drive straight in the left eye. When the ambulance arrived, an EMT emerged and began machine-gunning questions at me.

Meanwhile, I'm laying there in a pool of my own blood, half-blind and writhing in pain thinking, "Dude, I just shattered the entire left side of my face. Are you really talking to me right now?"

I know, I know, the EMT was just doing his job. And believe me, I've said a thousand silent prayers thanking the good Lord for his competence. But you know what I'm saying.

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When you're hurt, you want painkillers, not 20 questions.

The same goes for racecar drivers. When drivers are in an accident, they are required by NASCAR law to take an ambulance ride to the infield care center to be checked out.

They're already irate, so a barrage of questions from a local EMT or physician they've never so much as spoken to isn't overly welcome.

But what if it was someone they spent every weekend with, someone they'd spent time with away from the madness, built rapport with and respected?

Trust.

Trust is the deepest and fullest of emotions, and in the cutthroat Winston Cup garage area, extremely tough to come by. And we're talking personal health and well being here. You want someone you fully trust poking and prodding you.

That raises this week's question. What kind of benefits would NASCAR drivers and teams receive from having a full-time safety crew travel to every race?

For the record, the responses were tremendous.

drxtreme: NHRA, CART, IRL, F1 -- in fact, most all FIA-sanctioned events have traveling safety personnel.

They get to know each driver, their families, what they like, dislike, in other words - come race day they know a friend has their back if something bad happens.

After all, who would you rather have telling your wife or girlfriend that your in good or bad shape, a stranger or one of your friends?

After over 30 years of racing, I choose my friends, and that is why I left NASCAR for NHRA -- plain and simple -- the Safety Safari!

When our Jet car was sent to Japan to represent the NHRA and America, we also had the Safety team with us. Take a lesson from the sanctioning body that is rapidly taking the sponsors and spectators away from you NASCAR! Learn from the NHRA.

Well done, Rodman. As I stated earlier, trust is not to be underestimated. If a driver and his or her family respect and trust a physician/medical expert, a traumatic situation is a bit less frenzied. In the heat of the moment, calm is crucial.

Ask Alex Zenardi. An accident in Germany in September 2001 severed the driver's legs above the knee, leaving him unconscious and bleeding profusely. According to a Feb. 11, 2002 report in USA Today, legendary open wheel star Mario Andretti was quoted as saying that "another 30 seconds or a minute, and he would have bled out."

In the same report, CART medical director Steve Olvey said "Alex survived a crash that is almost always 100 percent fatal with the injuries he had."

Zanardi has on several occasions credited CART's safety team with saving his life. According to USA Today, the CART safety unit is trained for racing-specific accidents, travels to every race and, in Zanardi's case, arrived at the accident within seconds, controlled his bleeding legs and called in a helicopter to get him to the nearest trauma center.

ec: Drivers and teams will only benefit if they operate with respect for the teams and professionally.

Currently, some drivers do not. Keeping quality personnel around requires treating each other as teammates.

If the drivers are going to jump down the safety teams for making a mistake, they'd better not make the mistake of getting loose going into turn one.

Drivers need to be more understanding and safety crews need to continue striving for excellence.

Management of the safety teams would improve with a travelling safety team because they could hire a single management unit.

It's harder to have twenty or thirty capable safety team managers than it is to have one. Having only the best managers with the most experience working with the best teams can only be a benefit.

NASCAR can and should still lean on local safety teams for insight on the particulars of the track and the conditions.

The greatest benefit would be to have a travelling team that works with local teams. Without solid management and local expertise, it doesn't matter where you park the ambulance.

To a point, Eric Chavez just explained the way NASCAR's at-track safety situation currently functions.

NASCAR currently has a medical liaison for each of the top three series, and another "floater" liaison to give the others a break from time-to-time.

The liaisons go in early to each racetrack, meet with track and infield care center officials as well as visit with the local hospitals NASCAR chooses to use during a weekend.

In said meetings, the liaisons outline a checklist to make certain that lines of communication are clear, and be sure everything is in working order at the care center.

They also keep medical records for the drivers in order to maintain awareness of previous injuries.

The liaison also deals with the driver's family, assuring they have transportation to the hospital, coordinate their meeting with the doctors and keep them updated on the condition of the driver.

This is a welcome addition, and has received much praise from drivers' families this year.

The liaison also accompanies the driver to the local hospitals when transport is required, to assist the driver and/or family with any needs.

They also serve as the line of communication between the doctors and NASCAR public relations officials to provide periodic updates to the media, and assure the sanctioning body stays in line with the new HIPAA guidelines.

They also make advance calls to all tracks to prep for the upcoming races.

Moreover, NASCAR has established an accident investigation and reconstruction team that is based at its research and development center in Concord, N.C., with hopes of improving the procedures currently in place.

nyautos: A full-time safety crew would be familiar with the individual drivers and with Cup cars specifically. As others have posted, the on-site crews do a fine job considering.

But at some tracks, they only see Winston Cup cars once a year. Couple that with the crowds, personalities and TV coverage, and it can be a real circus for a local crew to deal with.

I think the best compromise is to have a small traveling safety team, maybe 5-6 people that would work alongside the local crews.

The specific knowledge these people would have could literally be a lifesaver. Further, if NASCAR puts on a full-time crew, I'll bet the complaining to the media stops.

After all, are you going to risk ticking off the guys that will be responsible for rescuing you week in and week out?

Manhattan Motor Mile has opened a can or worms worthy of Hank Parker with this response, and may not even know just how correct he is.

	Derrike Cope is loaded into an ambulance at RIR in 2002. Credit: Autostock

I'll agree that local safety units do a fine job for the most part, and that NASCAR's reasoning for utilizing them makes perfect sense - they know the area and experience trauma on a daily basis.

Hence, they're primed to react and know the quickest routes to local hospitals.

But many are also fans, which can create a problem. On any given day in the garage area you can see safety personnel grabbing hero cards, asking for autographs and a quick snapshot with the drivers.

After discussing this situation with various drivers, this doesn't sit overly well.

Those guys are at the track to work, not collect memorabilia.

donl: Everyone should just stop and think of how much time the "traveling crew" would have to spend training on each race track they go to.

How would that fit into the regular training they would have to do along with the rescue practices.

The EMS crew at each racetrack has been professionally trained and are more familiar with the track layouts and the response to the incidents than a traveling drew could do.

The rescue team that responded to Newman's incident knew exactly what to do. Remember that it is everyone's safety that is at risk on a racetrack.

For a driver to be in that position for 93 seconds seems like an eternity, but in fact was very fast for the conditions.

Remember that NASCAR officials dispatch the equipment to the scenes. The rescue teams do not self-dispatch.

The biggest issue presently surrounding local safety crews is the lengthy response time to the scene of the accident.

We all remember Dale Jarrett's walk down the frontstretch at Daytona last year and we all read Ryan Newman's reaction and saw Jeff Gordon's irate response last weekend.

The drivers have a right to be angry. As Newman said, it's their butts in the seats and their well being at risk. But Donnell Bennett brings up a great point here.

Safety crews are not allowed to respond to an accident until summoned by a NASCAR official, who is stationed in the control tower high above the action.

This presents a difficult Catch-22, because it's NASCAR's job to assure that the track is ready for safety crew response, and it's the safety crew's job to get there as quickly as possible and provide driver-assistance.

And judging by some of the responses to this query, many folks don't realize that it's a group effort. How could you know? It seems elementary ? respond the instant an accident occurs and get there as quickly as possible.

But it's not that simple. Countless variables are present, as my man River Phoenix spells out below:

the_Rine: Just about all major league auto racing series have full time Medical staff.

The biggest advantage to that is the doctors have the driver's and crewman's medical history at their fingertips in case of an emergency. As for safety crews, it is a toss up.

One thing is for sure, they would ensure that the equipment is in top shape and consistent procedures would be followed.

Newman upset after crash  WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- More than 24 hours after he sat in his upended car for more than a minute awaiting track workers outside Watkins Glen International's Turn 5, Ryan Newman was still adamant that something needs to be done about safety response in Winston Cup racing.  "My heart was beating fast -- I said it how it was," Newman said. "The crash itself was very, very minor. I just got up in the foam, and the way it caught the car it flipped it up on its side. If it hadn't flipped it up on its side I could have drove the car back to the pits.  Full Story

It is easy to blame emergency crews for slow response, however several factors, not the least of which is the racing back to the line deal and race control giving orders to respond etc, contributes to the response.

NASCAR, in it's zeal to provide the best racing bang for the buck, has to juggle the safety versus good entertainment value issue, and either way, you are going to get some fan somewhere all bent out of shape depending on whether their favorite driver was affected adversely by a particular decision or not.

Frankly, the issue is not as much a problem at an oval track, it is more pronounced at a road course where it is impossible to view the whole track and gain the big picture.

Each time an update must be relayed to race control, you introduce lead/decision/reaction time to the equation.

I've been around SCCA racing for a long time, and I know the training that each corner worker must go through, and I know it is a lot more rigorous that what you would think.

I think that in comparison, they perform at a level equal, if not higher than the typical local oval track operations crew does on a given Saturday night.

Bottom line is, I would not exactly point a finger at the crews.... if you must lay the blame token somewhere, I would put it squarely in NASCAR race operations hands, and the decision to do road courses in the first place.

No matter how much you want to place blame solely on the local guys, the fact is it's a team effort between NASCAR and the safety crews, and therefore a systematic issue that must be addressed.

cwoods: I believe that there would be little benefit [not to mention the expense] of having full-time safety crew's travel with each race.

What would be the difference between a full-time certified EMT or a local certified EMT. They both are certified at the same level of competency. Is there any special training that these full-time crews would get above their EMT certification?

I am not sure that the crews themselves are the issue. But rather, are there sufficient numbers of crews on-hand and are they strategically positioned?

Let's look at it from a fiscal perspective. First, what are the expenses are incurred to have local EMT certified crews at the tracks and who pays for it.

Who owns the equipment (ambulance and medical gear) that the local emergency crews are using? Who pay the salary for the local emergency crews?

It is my understanding that the local emergency crews volunteer their time and the company that owns the equipment donates its. At a nominal or no cost to NASCAR.

If full time crews are established, NASCAR would have to purchase the ambulances and medical equipment, not to mention the hauler to transport the equipment and personnel.

A lot of overhead to maintain.

How about training and certifying, and recertification? Their salary? NASCAR will have to fund the total program. If NASCAR establishes full time emergency crews, the fans will end up paying for it with higher ticker prices.

I would support having NASCAR fund specialized training [and certification] if necessary for local crews.

Moreover, maybe the question should be asked: are there enough emergency crews to support multiple accidents at the road track events?

It does not seem to be a problem at most tracks. Let us not be penny smart and dollars stupid, NASCAR needs to be fiscal responsible.

Put funding wear you would get the most bang for the NASCAR buck; fund local special [and certification] training as required. I have just scratched the surface of the implications of establishing full-time NASCAR emergency crews.

Though I'm not Bill France or Mike Helton, I'd venture to say that when it comes to achieving optimum driver safety, no expense should be spared.

Tiger does a fine job laying out the financial ramifications of instituting a fulltime safety team, but fails to include that life is priceless.

Like it or not, these guys are risking their lives every single time they flip the ignition. We somehow often forget that, but somewhere deep within us that's part of the allure of motorsports ? watching our heroes defy logic and escape spectacular crashes.

Key word: escape.

Following every crash, we expect our drivers to hop out and wave to the crowd.

We need to do everything possible to ensure it.