Yesterday at the Philly Tri, about 3/4 of my way around the second loop, there was a dude on the ground all tangled up in his bike moaning and in obvious pain. He was on the course, but mostly off to the side. I didn’t see him fall, he was conscious, but he was in obvious pain. There was a water station for the run course a couple hundred yards ahead. What’s the right thing to do here? Do you stop and try to help him up? Do you continue and alert the first race crew person you see?
I kept going and shouted to the volunteers at the water station that there was a rider down. A short distance past that was a race employee in a golf cart who I alerted as well. The people in front of me were also alerting them about the rider down -and they appeared to be calling for help. My feeling was that my stopping wouldn’t help anyone - I would have been one more body in the course, I don’t have any medical or recent first aid training and I didn’t have a phone or other means of calling for help. But I’ve been thinking about whether those are just justification and maybe I should have stopped to see if I could help.
I wasn’t going to win the race, but was racing for a PR and a test of my training. I didn’t WANT to stop, but I think I would have if the circumstances had been different - i.e. no one else was around, the guy was unconscious or he was blocking the course and needed to be moved. (In fact, I did just that on a training ride a few weeks ago - I came on a rollerbladers crumpled on the ground on a fairly quiet road on Long Island. I stopped, made sure she was OK and offered her some water. I waited until a car stopped and gave her a ride to her hotel.)
In a race - what would you have done and should I have done something different?
You passed by a guy on the ground, moaning away in pain, albeit conscious.
NO ONE was with him but there was a Water Station a couple hundred yards up.
And you didn’t stop…because you were going for a “PR”.
Let’s hope karma ain’t the bitch I hear it is.
Would taking 30 - 60 seconds really cost you that much?
Personally, I would have stopped. I might not be able to help (not that great w/ blood and moaning people) but I’d have to stop, just to make sure he’s all right for the moment.
I would have stopped. However I have some a pretty good first aid background and might have been able to help. Only time I have never stopped for a crash or a fall on the run is when the injured party has waved me on. I don’t care if I was about to win Kona, I stop for accidents.
If I were on the ground I would not want anyone racing for a PR or any other reason to stop for me I would have no problem laying there for 30 more seconds until someone from a water station or on a golf cart would come help me. I would already be mad my race was screwed up and would not want someone elses race screwed up too… just my thought.
Unless you’ve got enough of a medical backgroud on your own to improvise a tourniquet out of a spare bike tube, I’m of the opinion that the best thing to do is to do what you can to get the real medical professionals out to that person as soon as possible. So in this case, I’d say better to go ahead and have the aid station get on the radio ASAP than to stay and hope someone else gets word to send an ambulance out.
The two exceptions are if someone’s unconscious and you can’t tell if they’re still breathing. In which case, you stop and start rescue breathing/CPR. (and hey, every adult should know how to do CPR) Or for spurting arterial bleeding where you need to get pressure on the wound NOW!
I have my level 2 industrial first aid - I pretty much have to stop. Aside from that, I would have stopped if only to assess the injured’s actual condition, so I can relay some useful information to folks at the aid stop.
There was a psychology study done a few years ago that shows that when a subject sees someone in distress, if they have a perception that there are others near by who will “do something” about that distress, then the likelihood of the subject taking action was greatly reduced. If the subject perceived that there was no one else to help, 99% of the time the subject would take action. It seems we really do believe that “it’s someone else’s problem” if we believe there are others around us.
I was faced with a similar situation a few weeks ago. The guy in front of me plowed into a stopped, full-sized Ford truck. He snapped his bike in half and bounced into the shoulder of the road. I stopped to see if I could help but there was nothing I could do so I went a head to get a police officer. Then I went back to stay with him until help arrived. It took about four minutes altogether and my bro beat me by three! I guess that’s just the way it goes. It looks like he’ll be okay so that’s good.
I think you did ok. I rarely ever care enough about my race that I wouldn’t stop, but there are a few where I’d have done exactly what you did. Training day, no question, but race day up in the air.
Forget what the cool thing to do, or what will get you good karma down the road. Treating injured people is a race in itself. It is a race against the clock to get that person treated.
If you are unable to provide the proper treatment, it is you job to get someone who can ASAP. Like was said before, stopping to get information like if the extent of the injuries and exact location is necessary. Stopping to pat them on the back or give them a drink of water is wasting time that should be spent getting the correct people to help them.
Unless you had first-aid supplies on you, and the medical training to use them, you definitely made the right call. While the human instinct is to get off your bike and “do something,” in this case, what would you have been able to do if you stopped? Probably nothing than offering some words (which would have been nice, but done nothing to get help there faster).
By riding on and getting help moving as fast as you could have, that was the best choice.
You passed by a guy on the ground, moaning away in pain, albeit conscious.
NO ONE was with him but there was a Water Station a couple hundred yards up.
And you didn’t stop…because you were going for a “PR”.
Let’s hope karma ain’t the bitch I hear it is.
Would taking 30 - 60 seconds really cost you that much?
Personally, I would have stopped. I might not be able to help (not that great w/ blood and moaning people) but I’d have to stop, just to make sure he’s all right for the moment.
So let me see if I read your post right…
You would have stopped so you could feel good/better about yourself?
I’m going to try not to be too defensive here, especially because after posting the message, seeing the responses and thinking about it, I’m more convinced that I did the right thing.
You got it mostly right. But you’re missing a big detail - and maybe it’s my fault for not being clear. He wasn’t alone. There were spectators on the side of the road, it was a 1,900 person race, we were a couple hundred yards from a group of volunteers and probably just 2-3 miles from the transition area (meaning that emergency personnel there could get to him very quickly). There were cops on the course a short distance both ahead and behind him. And since I didn’t see him fall, I assumed that a rider ahead of me had already told at least a few race volunteers or officials that a rider was down.
Also, stopping short on the course would have been dangerous - to both me and other riders.
Finally - say you stop and he is “all right for the moment” - fine, you did a good deed and get karma points. But what if you stop and he’s not “all right for the moment”, then what? Then, I guess you get back on your bike and alert someone that he’s not all right…
I would have stop and stay with the injured person until somebody with a medical background show’s up. Just having somebody beside you telling you that you are going to be alright and that help is on the way makes you feel better. No stopping is unnacceptable, I dont care who you are!
well my husband (we didn’t know each other at the time) got hit about 10 miles into our first IM, I didn’t stop and he still asked me to marry him !!
there were plenty of race people that stopped.
“…all tangled up in his bike moaning and in obvious pain.”
hello. red flag is waving widly in the wind here.
sometimes there is no other proper option than to stop.
no race…anywhere/anyday…is worth more than potentially leaving someone to linger in angony…or worse.
that said…you have to make a judgement call on the fly based on who appears to be attending the fallen rider and what is happening around him or her to determine what to do.
if the rider is not being attended or if you see a couple kids there and no cell phones are obvious…yada yada yada…you have to stop regardless of whether you can personally offer any immediate medical assistance. your next course of action should be obvious. it should be even more obvious if you have first aid and CPR training.
if however there are adults attending the fallen rider, and because you are alert to what is coming up and your slowing down and asking if they have med assistance on the way and they respond positively…then keep going. if you are trained and capable…i suggest you still stop. if you keep going it remains your minimum responsibility to alert the next volunteer group and or police about the situation…just in case.
always…always…always…at least asses the situation and always err on the side of stopping when you may not be needed rather than leaving someone unattended.
and please…don’t even talk about a PR in the same breath as this topic.
Lots of do-gooders with a martyr complex mixed in among the rational folks.
Saying you MUST stop in a situation and criticizing someone who doesn’t is simplifying to an extreme in and many cases will result in the improper response to the situation. Look at the example the OP gives:
He/she sees a guy who has crashed. He/she has no proper medical training. There is already a “crowd” nearby (as stated in a follow-up post). He/she actively looked for the proper personnel to inform and did so. I’d actually say he/she did exactly what they should have done and furthermore what they did was what was best for the injured party. To criticize someone simply because they admitted they didn’t want to stop in a race and were going for a PR (which is what we are all thinking but might not say) is BS. You don’t get any brownie points for using someone else’s misfortune to try and make yourself feel like a good person. And before anyone jumps on that comment- that obviously does not imply simply stopping in of itself is a poor choice. As another poster said- it is the right choice if you have properly assessed the situation.
