KEEP YOUR HANDS INSIDE THE RIG! And dont under any circumstance hold onto the roll cage, if you have one.

Yesterday morning out at TDS one of my close friends was injured because of a dumb mistake. He was playing around in some of the trenches with his drivers side tires up high on one of the walls. He made the mistake of having his hand on the cage when the tire suddenly slipped causing the rig to transition rather violently to the driver side and smack the cage against the trench wall, with his hand in between the two. Needless to say the results were not pretty. I wasn't present at the time but I was told he passed out just about immediately from the pain and shock, and was very out of it when he came to. The buggy still has a lot of blood in it even after someone cleaned up the worst of it. He ended up being treated in camp by the paramedics, then transported to the hospital in Banning where they did x-rays and determined that his hand was too damaged for them to work on there. He then got an ambulance ride to Loma Linda where a number of pins were inserted in his hand, and his palm was sewn up.

When the the cage crushed his hand it kinda popped, and tore most of his palm open, also breaking 3 bones. He got out of the hospital this afternoon and is doing ok now, but will not have much if any use of his hand for quite a while.

This is the worst kind of reminder you can have of your bad habits, and this kind of stuff should never happen. He was a VERY experienced wheeler and knew better. In fact he was the first person I ever rode on a trail with before I got my first rig, and guess what the first thing he told me was? Dont grab the cage! Just goes to show, no matter how experienced you are you can still get hurt just by not paying attention for a second.

<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />
Dallas

*Ouch* <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" /> Hate to hear about stuff like this happening when its so easily preventable. Hopefully your buddy will gain back functional use of that hand. Make sure his Dr. writes a script for him to get plenty of occupational therapy as soon as its appropriate. They are the hand experts.

Dallas sorry to hear about your friend. We had both Isuzu's at TDS this weekend. It was a mad house with lots f carnage (rigs and injuries) on the trails. We spend the time with 4 other Jeeps and wheeled away unharmed (well except for the tred rolling off my tire on the way home). Several roll overs, lots of arrests, body damage all over the place. I've never seen anything like it. There were over 1,500 "registered" vehicles and who knows how many thousands more that were unregistered. This was my first major Jeep event. This made me realize how great our small little Moab Zu really is. The only other Isuzu's I saw there was besides the VX and Amigo was a first gen light orange Amigo, and that awesome Trooper of Gilberts. Sorry we didn't see you there.

I saw that orange amigo and I was actually camped right next to Gilbert. I didn't bring my amigo though as I came out with team RedBull and they let me wheel their old comp buggy all weekend.



Dallas

It couldn't be more than a couple weeks since you pointed out to me the importance of a cage design that keeps your hands and arms inside the rig. The first thing you want to do at an angle like that is grab the rail to brace yourself. I guess this really drives your point home. I'm sorry to hear that his hand was crushed, and hope they can fix it.
btw, Talked to Gilbert at TDS and tried to find where you guys were camped, but I couldnt find it. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> Hope ya all had a good time.

Andy

Funny thing about it is I built his buggy with him, and a lot of thought was put into tube placement and safety. The doors on it are high to try to keep your arms in during a roll, but that doesn't help when you purposely grab them. One thing I think could have been a factor was that he doesn't tend to wear the shoulder straps of his 4 point harness much, as he's still not used to having them. I believe when the accident happened he was bracing himself on the cage because of the hard side angle. If he had been wearing the shoulder belts tightly there would have been no need for this as they would have held him in place. Right now both of my shoulders are chafed raw from the 4 points in the RockIt, but I didn't get bouced around, and when I rolled it doing something simple I barely moved at all. Once everything stopped I grabbed the roof to hold myself, released the belts and climbed out to start hookin up the winch cable. No worries, just a spilled bag of pretzels and a little lost fuel.

Dallas