- There are some mean crashes in NASCAR, F1, Indy,
and we're gonna watch some of the meanest ones,
but know that everyone survives in the clips
that we're about to watch, and we're gonna talk
about the medical situations in each of these scenarios.
Also, huge thanks to ShipStation for sponsoring this video.
Peewoop! (air whooshing)
- The distance ahead. (cars buzzing)
- Oh, we got Formula 1 action.
Honestly, the "Surviving F1" series is fire
if you haven't watched it yet. (cars zooming)
Haas. (tires squealing)
- Fuck. - Oh, oh, oh!
(vehicle crashing) Oh!
Where would his body be?
It looks like it would be split in pieces,
and the fact that there's a fire.
I mean, he's in a fireproof suit,
but how long can that help for?
(mouse clicking) Oh, there he is.
He's trying to get out.
(dramatic music)
Oh, my God, you gotta spray him.
See, the problem with spraying down directly to person
is it's good and bad at the same time.
Good in that you're dousing the flame,
but the reason you point the fire extinguisher
at the base of the flame
is to literally suffocate the flame,
and when you're shooting it at a person's face,
you're essentially suffocating the person as well.
See, the dangerous part would be
if he was knocked unconscious 'cause then he wouldn't
be able to climb outta the car.
(suspenseful music)
Look, you could see that the medical delegate
is trying so hard to get near him,
but the flames must be so hot. (mouse clicking)
(suspenseful music)
Oh, he must've burned his hand.
Burns to the hand are so bad because of the contractors
that can form, that the skin essentially starts
becoming flex, (air whooshing)
and you're gonna need multiple surgeries usually,
and occupational therapy.
Shout-out to my occupational therapists out there,
to help work that hand open and keep its strength
or recover its strength.
Wow, he's walking away from this?
Not even walking. My guy is running away from it.
(dramatic music) (air whooshing)
- [Narrator] Not only has he survived
going through a barrier
at 160 miles an hour. (mouse clicking)
160 miles an hour?
And how is he not concussed going
from 160 miles an hour to zero so quickly?
The danger in crashes is going
from a high speed to a zero speed because all
of that inertia carries your organs forward, even the brain.
The brain sits in a soup, so it starts hitting the front
of your scalp when you come to an abrupt stop,
and I know they have neck-stabilizing devices
in the car, but whoa.
- [Narrator] And he's insisting, "No, no, no, no,
we'll, we'll get the ambulance here,"
but he wanted to demonstrate that he was okay.
He got a message to everyone,
his wife and family in particular, that-
(mouse clicking) - Okay, beautiful message.
Medically, I hate it.
Adrenaline in moments like this is rushing so fast
that you might not have any idea
what's going on in your body.
You might be bleeding internally.
You might be bleeding internally into your skull,
having a stroke.
So many things could be going wrong right now,
and just to symbolize that you're great and strong,
you do the extra walk?
Unnecessary. Actually, it's the same reason in boxing.
Once there's a knockout, they don't have people
just usually stand up right away after the matches.
They first bring them to a stool.
They have them calm down in the stool,
and they evaluate what's going on there,
and they have the doctor speak with them.
Then they have them stand up, and they redo it again,
and there's reasons for this progression,
because we wanna make sure that the body
and mind are both safe. (mouse clicking)
Looks like, "He only suffered minor burns
to the back of his hands, a sprained left ankle,
and was discharged from the hospital soon after."
That's crazy that that's all that happened.
I mean, I sprained my right ankle walking
to the refrigerator the other day on Bear's toy,
and this guy's surviving a 160-mile-an-hour wreck.
(air whooshing) - Outside making a move.
- Okay, Indy. (mouse clicking)
For those of you who don't know,
I was with Mario Andretti in an Indy car.
Did a lap. How about you? (laughs)
(signal beeping)
- Kanaan is rubbing, oh! - Are they gonna touch wheels?
- They're gonna touch wheels! - It's just in sight
through there! - Oh, God, oh, my God.
- Oh, they touched wheels on a turn.
That's awful. - No. All right, oh!
- Oh, my God. - That's Robert Wickens!
And his teammate- - Robert Wickens.
They got everybody. (cars zooming)
Oh, my God,
the spin's ridiculous. - That was ugly.
- The strain and force a spin like that puts on your neck,
I can't even begin to understand
because when I took those turns with Andretti,
I felt it in my neck, like my whole head
being pushed to one side.
When you're spinning like that,
constantly changing direction,
the amount of G's is incredible.
Nothing like even my F-16 experience.
(radio static hissing) (relaxed music)
(static crackling)
"Violent crash, Pocono Raceway,"
which is where I did mine, by the way.
"Confirmed Thursday night that he is paralyzed
from the chest down"?
No way!
So if chest down, likely, that means
that there was some kind of spinal cord injury,
and obviously, from a spin like that,
as I was saying, you're putting so much torque
on the spinal cord that it's no surprise
that there was severe damage.
(air whooshing) - Ryan Newman
off turn four for the final time,
Blaney to the outside. - Oh, car's fishtailing.
Fishtailing. Fishtailing! - Here comes Hamlin
on the inside. (Dr. Mike gasping)
Wow, crash into the wall. - Why?
Why? Oh, my God. - Into the air goes Newman
in a shower of sparks
on his roof. - God, the amount
of sparks in there. - Ryan Newman
comes across the line fourth. - The heat.
- Newman got turned. - Jesus.
- Went up in the air.
As he came down, was hit by another car
and launched skyward.
- You know, in traditional car accidents,
like on the highway, they have this device
called the Jaws of Life to actually cut through the doors
and other mechanical obstacles that might be
in the way to free passengers.
I wonder how they do it here.
- [Announcer] Tries to go to the outside, then the inside.
They lock bumpers and turns
Ryan Newman around. - Oh, my God.
He hit the side there really hard.
Again, a lotta pressure on the neck.
Being upset, like, this is okay.
Again, there's no rapid stop.
Where you have that inertia, the organs
potentially experiencing a high G force.
So this sliding effect is actually life-saving.
"He would later hold an interview with 'Today'
on March 11th, where he discussed the crash,
revealing he was knocked out and sustained a bruised brain."
Bruised brain, essentially, he had a concussion,
probably a contrecoup injury from getting hit on one side.
And remember, when the brain hits one side,
it then automatically bounces to the other side
'cause it sits in that soup.
That's called a contrecoup injury.
But glad to know that he's alive.
(air whooshing) Let's take a minute
and talk about ShipStation, the leading
web-based order management and shipping software.
It's designed to make retailers' lives easier
by making processing, fulfilling,
and shipping e-commerce orders more efficient.
I know how difficult it is running an online business.
I mean, I'm launching new merch, so I understand the value
of having the right tools before you get started.
Shipping can become total chaos during the holidays too,
as orders increase and everyone is panicking
to get their gifts in on time.
That doesn't have to be your life, though.
Thanks to ShipStation, you can focus
on growing your business from day one,
as they eliminate all the headaches that come
with printing labels or handling orders
across multiple platforms like Amazon, Etsy, eBay,
even your own website.
One of the best parts of ShipStation is that you can get
the same discounted shipping rates as Fortune 500 companies
regardless of how much you're selling.
Over 130,000 companies have grown their ecommerce business
with ShipStation, and 98% of those companies
that use them for one year become customers for life.
This holiday season, give yourself the gift
of stress-free holiday shipping.
Go ShipStation.com/DoctorMike.
Remember, Doctor is spelled out.
And sign up for a free 60-day trial.
That's right, ShipStation.com/DoctorMike.
Start today, and get set up
before the biggest shipping season of the year.
(air whooshing) - They come through
the tri-oval. (cars zooming)
Checkered is waving. (cars zooming)
Ernie Irvan wins, and Rusty spins
and gets, oh, Lord! - Oh, he's flying.
He's flying, rolling, rolling. - And flips wildly
right at the start/finish- - Okay, if I'm trying to gauge
the risk of an accident, this is probably
one of the safest ones we've seen so far.
Not to downplay the injuries that happened here,
but because, again, the car kept rolling,
that looks terrifying but usually creates the safest stop
for the car because again, it's that sudden stop
and the speed of that stop, the deceleration
that causes the most damage and is the most lethal.
- [Announcer] Yeah, he's moving.
I see him moving around in the car!
(cars zooming)
- Again, usually what results from this
is neck injuries, concussions from the rolling around.
Maybe if your hand gets caught in something.
That's why I think Formula 1 drivers,
and I don't know about other racing sports,
are taught to take their hands immediately
off the wheel on an accident. (mouse clicking)
"Thankfully, Wallace, simply lucky to be alive,
given the severity of the incident,
didn't suffer any severe injuries.
He did, however, suffer some minor ones
and was forced to wear a cast on his hand
for the next few races.
His accident inspired the introduction of roof flaps
to NASCAR vehicles, which work to reduce flipping
when cars go airborne."
I mean, a cast with a crash of that severity
is a pretty good thing to get away with.
(air whooshing) - But you can see Mike moving
inside the car. (spectator screaming)
- He's going on the inside. - Oh, all the airborne ones
are so bad, oh, my God.
Oh, my God. (mouse clicking)
See, some of the most dangerous parts here
are when the car that is airborne and its wheels
make contact with the other driver from their head,
which is unprotected, and I know in Formula 1,
they started creating some sort of protection for them.
I don't know if this was instituted
at the time of this race. - Here in turn three and four,
quite a few years ago. - Oof, wow.
- [Announcer] And the car is up into the fence,
which is almost reminiscent of Kenny Brack's accident
at Texas quite a few years ago, guys.
Very, very lucky. - Yeah, so he went body
into the fence, which again, takes a major toll
on your spinal cord, 'cause imagine you're sitting,
and your spinal cord experiences
all those compressive forces, puts pressures on your discs.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a disc herniation
involved here, bulging disc, maybe even a disc rupture
from the severity of that injury.
"Conway had surgery for multiple fractures
in his lower left leg and had been diagnosed
with a compression fracture in his back."
That's interesting because I was talking
about disc compression, but the vertebrae,
which are the actual bony bodies in between the discs,
can fracture as well.
Must have been a lotta damage to his spine,
but definitely can recover with surgery from that.
(air whooshing) - Whoa!
Oh, look out. We got trouble.
This is gonna hurt.
(flames hissing) - Oh, oh, oh, oh, my God!
For the people in the stands! (cars zooming)
(tires squealing) And for the car. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, multiple hits. (vehicles scraping)
The whole race is over.
- [Announcer] So Jeffrey is alert, at least,
and conscious and able to move.
- Oh, my God. - O don't know about you guys,
but I'm breathing a little bit better right now.
- Well, me too. - I mean, I'm not
because you're still not out of danger
until you're in the hospital.
Even in the hospital, when we have a patient
in one area, and we need to transfer them,
whether it's from a regular inpatient floor unit
to the ICU or from the ER to the patient room.
That transportation can only happen
when the patient's stable, and things go wrong
during that transportation that you need to be present
and ready to activate a code blue, a rapid response,
and treat the patient right then and there.
"He suffered a concussion, facial laceration,
multiple bruises, right wrist fracture,
and a small fracture to a vertebra, and is
in intensive care unit in serious but stable condition."
Wow, I would say that it's probably a very severe concussion
when you're being tossed around at that rate of speed.
I mean, that's incredible. (air whooshing)
- Just as I walk outta infirmary, they said,
"Lee Petty just went over the turn three and four wall."
(tires squealing) (vehicles crashing)
- Oh! (glass shattering)
This looks like something from the scene
of a car game called Carmageddon.
(laughs) I don't know if you guys remember that game,
or Twisted Metal. - Twisted Metal for sure.
- Yeah, I think I also couldn't afford the real game,
but I got my hands on a demo disk.
- Oh, okay. - And I just played the demo
over and over. (laughs) (signal beeping)
- Went in to talk to him.
He was about half conscious and all,
just tore all to pieces,
cut up everywhere. - Oh, my God.
- Ribs broke, and punctured lung.
Just his leg all, just all busted,
all just hanging there. - Oh, my God.
That's the biggest danger that I always tell you guys about,
whenever there's a rib fracture,
about puncturing your lung and developing a pneumothorax.
Also, less talked about but equally dangerous is if
that rib fractures in an area where it nicks your aorta.
You have massive internal bleeding.
That's a deadly, deadly injury.
"Lee Petty's car was destroyed, and then they took
his broken, apparently lifeless body to the hospital.
It was some time before he could have broken bones fixed.
They waited to see if he would stabilize
as he lay in a coma.
He spent four months in the hospital.
Petty did return to racing, but he was never quite
as competitive again," wow. (air whooshing)
Oh, throwback. Okay, let's see what happened.
Oh, oh, wow! (mouse clicking)
Okay, those are the ones I'm talking about,
where you're going high rate of speed,
and then you come to an instant stop.
That's where you lose your life.
- [Announcer] There is Michael Waltrip now,
standing up, climbing out from around
that shredded, mangled mass of sheet metal.
- What, he's just walking out? - That was
a Pontiac Grand Prix just a few moments ago.
- Yeah, Ben, I think I'm all right.
Got some contusions and a little bit of confusion,
but that's probably not too unusual.
- That's not unusual? That is unusual.
When we decide whether or not to scan someone's head
for an intracranial bleed, it's based off of certain signs
and symptoms, but also the mechanism of injury,
and going 100 miles an hour or whatever that was to zero
is most definitely a high-speed accident warranting
a full-body CAT scan. (mouse clicking)
- [Waltrip] I think I'm all right, and we'll go home
and get a good night's rest tonight.
- No, you don't go home!
You go straight to the hospital.
I hope he went to the hospital.
(mouse clicking) - Try to figure out something.
- You know, my seat stayed secured in the frame rail,
and the only frame rail, really, that stayed
as a part of the back of the car.
This part came and went that. - Wow, I think the only thing
that really saved him here was that he hit the outside
of his car, not his own side.
If it was the driver's side that had that impact,
it would've been a very different outcome.
(air whooshing) - Alonso, let's go!
This is McLaren days, not Ferrari days.
(vehicle crashing) Oh, there goes his front tire.
Oh, it's so hard to make out what just happened.
- Is he okay? - The whole axle
looked like it went. (cars zooming)
He walked away like that? That's him?
Wait, is that Esteban Gutierrez?
(bubble popping)
That's my friend!
Look at all these pictures of me and him.
- You see the sky. Then you see the ground.
You see the sky, and you know you exactly where you are,
and you keep moving, moving, you want to stop.
Then they kinda stop.
I saw a little space throughout,
and I said, "I go out quickly."
And my mom will watch TV, so I want
to be out quite quickly. - Wow.
- And I'll say that I'm okay.
"I feel fine physically, but everything hurts a little
because you move around so much at those speeds.
The knee is what bothers me most
as it hit the steering column,
but I feel very lucky," very lucky.
Everything is gonna hurt for a while,
and honestly, you should be under observation
because if you are even having a small bleed internally,
you wanna make sure that you're able to act quickly.
So I have a funny story with Esteban Gutierrez.
We went to a family dinner.
I took him in my Audi TTS, and I was gonna drop him off
at his place and then go home,
and I'm with a Formula 1 driver.
I'm gonna drive and try and look cool,
and because of that, I turned in to the Holland Tunnel
in the city, and I didn't mean to do that.
So I was like, "Oh, my God, I turned into the wrong thing."
So I was like, "Let me just back up real quick
'cause I'm not that far in,"
and as soon as I started backing up,
you see a cop walk out onto the street
and go, "Excuse me, sir.
Come on. Come on," and had me pull up.
Checked my windows for tints.
(bubble popping) Started writing me tickets.
I was like, "Officer, I'm so sorry.
I made this mistake.
I'm a physician.
This is a Formula 1 Driver.
He's like, "I couldn't care less.
Here's your 10 ticket," but yeah, that goes to say
that even you have a Formula 1 driver
in your passenger seat, don't try and show off
because things will go wrong. (static hissing)
- [Announcer] But the rest of the field is-
- Oh, no. Oh, no.
This is gonna be the worst one, isn't it?
(cars zooming) (tires squealing)
(laughs) This looks like a skit.
The only thing that I'll say is this is pretty low speed,
so I guess that's a little bit safer,
but these vehicles weren't as safe,
so that's not necessarily true.
You know what's really scary?
When you watch some of those videos
when there is a blizzard, and there's low visibility,
and then there's an accident and another accident,
and all of a sudden, there's cars just sliding
into other cars, and then people come out
to see what's going on, and they're getting trapped.
Never exit your vehicle if you're
in one of those situations.
Call for help. Stay in your vehicle.
Because you don't know what's coming behind you.
That's the scary part, and if you do exit, run away.
Don't stay on the highway. (air whooshing)
I mentioned earlier that I flew an F-16.
Check out that video right here.
I'm doing barrel rolls, upside down twisties,
9 G's, over 9 G's.
Seriously, click here to watch that,
and don't forget to visit ShipStation.com/DoctorMike
to begin your 60-day free trial.
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)