Toomas Heikkinen Crash

[I Rosputnik]

The crash in question.

Recently at the X-games there a crash involving Toomas Heikkinen and as you can see it was pretty nasty. To make things worse there was a lack of on track marshals with the mechanics and local fire services having to help Heikkinen out.

So I am curious hear what could of been done better if there where more marshals on the scene?

[Woolley]

The obvious answer is fast fire extinction, then remove the casualty carefully under controlled conditions rather than let him crawl away with a broken ankle.

Another obvious thought is why hadn't that ramp got some sort of primary crash protection structure on the front of it? A foot or two lower and that could have been really serious.

For all that, winner of the most impressive accident of the year. Don't think anyone's going to beat that!

[fieldodreams79]

I am not sure how much thought or who did the thinking, but the X Games people need to take a serious look at their courses in the future, who is "marshaling" and how to respond better. Two very serious accidents in one day warrants some sort of investigating into the whole deal.

Having only seen the Heikinen shunt, and it being the question here, it seemed the people closest to the scene could only yell "fire" which would be the only thing one could do without suppression equipment. Leaving the driver to get out as quickly as possible on his own which could have led to him further injuring himself. Instead of having a bunch of flat brimmed hat people standing around with ipads filming the event, they should have had some SCCA marshals in white suits with fire extinguishers at every danger zone. Granted, I am seeing with 20/20 and am not sure who is in charge, but the X Games is what it is. There is danger in every event, but I am curious as to how much racing knowledge the people who organize the rallycross have. Would it be the same who have been organizing the ones all year?

[cowchap]

Knowing nothing about X games I can only comment on the clip ,but it looks from the start a pretty dangerous stunt which the driver attempted presumably being aware of the risks , and I have to say that as a marshal I'm not sure how close to the landing zone I'd want to be standing !
The fire truck was there in less than 30 seconds and one of the crew went immediately to the driver whilst the others started to tackle the fire-seemed fairly reasonable to me though as always i'm sure with hindsight there is room for improvement.

[PVDA]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it.

The response was quick enough but using water with that style of fire hose when the Dry Chemical extinguisher that they had with them would've knocked out the fire within seconds rather than the Keystone Cops looking effort they ended up with.

It all comes down to training and costs, for regular fire fighters they're taught to use water, compared to the cost of recharging a dry chem extinguisher it wins hands down and remember the number of car fires they'd attend annually.

The jump design needs to be looked at as any other ramp to ramp jump would normally have some form of landing zone which would prevent a head on like this.

[PVDA]

and even worse who would leave the equivelent of a tree stump in the middle of a corner on a Rallycross course looking at team mate Marcos Gronholm coming unstuck at the same event

http://youtu.be/MZOUXuHBz-I

[TrueBlueFlyer]

do they even use marshals for X-games?

[cptkablamo]

I'd have to agree that the Gronholm accident was unforgivable considering the event isn't using fixed infrastucture. Having an immovable concrete block/pole there like that was asking for trouble