OMG - I was the follow car / wheel support for elite 3's - Scott that you were riding with. I am so sorry to hear it was that bad of an accident! Amazing as he stated that he thought he had broken ribs. I hope he is on his way to recovery! The part that just doesn't add up is there just happened to be a CHP officer at that corner that called it in with in a minute or 2 of the accident.

Scott N - as far as the junior statement - not sure if it was you that I talked to but I can tell you that the only junior around that crash was poor Daniel Farinha, and he was taken out by the crash.

At Snelling I was the follow car for the 3's and the 17/18 junior race and we had 2 pretty bad accidents - no help on the course! One kid went into shock but that was all the way back at registration and then they had to call for help. Seems to be a better way? At Merco at least there was a first aid tent just after the finish. I was able to deliver the other 3 riders to get medical attention.

Cheers

Andrew sr.

Report such discussions to the chief referee, along with any others who heard it. There are consequences to the offending rider that may include relegation, disqualification, etc. It pains me to hear that junior riders may be even conssidering that kind of strategy as acceptable racing.

George Meilahn

This is rather disconcerting to hear, especially after witnessing the following conversation between riders from two top juniors teams immediately after the conclusion of the E3 road race at Merco:

Rider 1 (furious): What the hell was that?
Rider 2: What do you mean?
Rider 1: You're willing to take out the entire group just so you can get a placing?
Rider 2: Yeah.

Hopefully this was just your normal youthful testosterone poisoning, and not the cause of this crash.

cabikerchick wrote: lucky someone came along to assess him

I think this is where the problem is, nobody came to assess him. He was only assessed after sitting in the ER in Turlock another hour, they were understaffed and didn't have any available rooms. He wasn't even given any x-rays, tests for at least two hours after arrival.

Scott

It's Wednesday and this is the first I've heard of this accident, and I was racing and onsite all day as we were the last to go off. Cat 4 W.

Very serious injuries indeed and lucky someone came along to assess him. Just a simple overview of the Road Races to date, I would concur that we need to increase both communication and pre-race coordination with local emergency response AND medical community. Mercy Merced as filled with Snelling racers, probably would have appreciated a heads up the event was pending. They can staff accordingly.

NCNCA Safety Committee: Chris Phipps is the BOD assigned to that working group, and there are volunteers in the pipleline to review just these types of issues. PLS contact Chris if you are interested in serving as a member and have a passion for race safety. Tad Borek is scanning historical incident reports, with the working group scheduled to begin nexus analysis of crash data for the purpose of forwarding recommendations for safety and prevention to the larger Board and Association. This is an 'all hands on deck' issue for the health of our sport, event permitting, our racers, and our pocket books.

FYI tidbits:

-SoCal Association requires an ambulance on-site at permitted races as a requirement to run a race.
-Also, ambulance service can be in place on a price schedule: transport only, stablization only (assess & transport determination), full-code.
-In rural areas medi-vac flight roll outs are standard operating procedure where a specific response time cannot be met by ground transport (e.g., "man down, it's bad, EMT is lost/stuck in traffic").

-Once an emergency call is made, the provision of ambulance service type, including final destination, is driven by local county policy via inter-county Agreements between public/private hospitals, fire departments, county EMS administration, and the private sector ambulance carriers. They will not stop or consider ending response once in motion if called and waived off; liability.

End Note: It is my observation that there is consensus by the membership that NCNCA is poised for a paradigm shift related to med-trauma support at races, up to and including a better understanding of and access to insurance coverage post-incident. As we grow in numbers and avg race speed, the physics of unfortunate occurrences is linear.

So, Safety Committee will tackle both prevention of incidents AND real time responses to these events, which should result in overall improved safety and racing experiences.

KH

bunny wrote:

or if it was that much of an emergency, life flight could have been dispatched from the start and i assume that the dispatcher didn't realize there would be that much delay or maybe that would have been done

He was in fact mediflighted that afternoon from Turlock to Stockton to their trauma center so it was a pretty serious accident.

He's got a broken neck and was there for quite sometime sans neck brace, backboard, etc.,.and after checking his charts, was millimeters away from being paralyzed.

I think the very least could have been a moto taking an ems person to the site to make an evaluation.

bunny wrote:exactly!

sirens should automatically neutralize a field even without a moto ref!

agreed, i was in one of the snelling fields the ambulance came through. upon hearing the sirens and seeing the flashing lights we neutralized ourselves.

exactly!

sirens should automatically neutralize a field even without a moto ref!

There was at least one ambulance at the Snelling race that went against the direction of the race. It passed the women 1/2/3 as we crested the blind hill on Olsen(?), escorted in front by a VeloPromo truck who worked with our field's moto ref to make the pass with no problems.

Even if the official vehicles hadn't been there, we heard the sirens well before it passed us.

given that it was a closed course, the ambulance really couldn't safely go against the direction of the race--if it was enough of an emergency, the race would have had to have been stopped to let them safely on the course in that direction

or if it was that much of an emergency, life flight could have been dispatched from the start and i assume that the dispatcher didn't realize there would be that much delay or maybe that would have been done

but what i could see as an easy solution for the ambulance to safely get to the rider going the same direction as the racers but much more quickly would have been for the moto official to escort it, neutralizing the packs as it approached to the ambulance could pass

Tad thanks. Turns out it was 3 broken ribs, 3 cracked vertebrae (in his neck) and a lacerated kidney. I think he's starting to get a little better, but still running lots of tests and still in the hosp.

On the EMS, I fully understand many of the issues having put on a few races. It's tricky and from my conversation with the Chief Ref and the Organizer there was a bit of a perfect storm as there was another accident in the womens race at the start finish line that also required an ambulance.

However it still doesn't take away from the fact, that this was a serious crash and it did not appear to be treated as such...a lacerated kidney probably isn't a good thing to have sitting in the dirt next to road for that long a period of time.

I'm totally open to suggestions for our race and for other races. For Crits its a pretty simple undertaking given the shortness of the course, but for a road race in a rural area, I don't have the answers. What happens like in this instance when there is a crash on a closed course and there is no way to get an ambulance to the scene w/o going against the race direction? Apparently that's what I was told was the problem. Secondly, my teammate asked the ambulance why they were going so slow..their response, they were stuck behind the pack. Not sure what the answer is but definitely something that requires some consideration. Luckily it wasn't a major head trauma or other worse internal damage.

Scott, really sorry to hear about that, I hadn't heard - though did see an ambulance come through my field at one point, maybe that was it? Hope your teammate's condition has improved.

I don't remember if you were on the WebEx attendee list but at tonite's NCNCA meeting the Board announced that we just created a Safety Committee, headed up by Katherine Hamilton (vp-medical@ncnca.org). She spoke a bit about it, and reviewing incidents like this was one of her ideas for 2010. I can't speak for her regarding details, but rest assured this is going to get looked at. In the meantime, feel free to email her directly, and I'll mention something to her as well.

-Tad