Shifting the focus from the drivers to the medical pioneers who saved their lives is as exhilarating as a health and safety briefing
Even if you are not an aficionado of motor sports, let alone the particular branch of it that revolves around US race competitions such as the Indy 500, this documentary on injury medicine within this sector was, surprisingly, a little bit interesting. Perhaps that’s because directors Roger Hinze and Michael William Miles so single-mindedly keep the focus on the medical track, as opposed to the asphalt one, which makes physicians such as on-site medical officer Stephen Olvey and orthopaedic surgeon Terry Trammell the real heroes of the story, rather than drivers such as Mario Andretti. It’s as if, say, a history of an architectural style is being told through the eyes of plumbers – not where you would expect the focus to be but interesting nonetheless.
Rapid Response, however, doesn’t start well. The first section offers a string of crash footage accompanied by talking heads explaining just how bad the mutilations are, as if made by a diehard fan of the gore-porn of JG Ballard’s Crash. But then it starts to explore how the rapid responders’ interventions began to inform the sport, shaping first the emergency procedures on the track – amazingly, it took a while for the organisers to think of having helicopters on hand to evacuate injured drivers – and then even the design of the cars.