The Story of The Flying Doctor; John Hinds

The Isle of Man TT may be the best known motorcycle race on the planet. (Even though it consists of several races). I've often heard TT racers compare track riding to rock climbing and road racing to rock climbing without a harness. One mistake and there's a good chance it's all over for you. The 37.73 mile mountain course is 10-15 times longer than your average race track and consists of narrow country roads with no run off areas and a circuit full of what the riders call, "furniture". (Lamp posts, curbs, walls, trees, basically any object that can't be removed from the circuit before racing.) With riders traveling at speeds of over 200mph and an average of three fatalities at the TT annually, it is not hard to see why an innovative medical response idea was born on the island.

While I can't honestly say who's idea this was initially, I can tell you the man that made it happen. His name is Dr. John Hinds and he's a trauma doctor and motorcycle enthusiast. With the TT stretching over so many miles that an ambulance response would take too long, losing valuable life saving time will en route to a crash, Combined with many sections of the course inaccessible by helicopter, a new idea was born. Take a trauma Doctor who happens to be a solid and fast rider, and put them on a bike, sent out about ten seconds after the racers, improving response times by a huge margin. While Dr Hinds wouldn't ride at full race pace, he would follow the riders at speeds up to 160-170mph, ensuring a lighting fast response time in the event of a crash. His early response was beyond effective and over the years this saved countless lives.

After this method saw some success at the TT, it was utilized at other UK road racing events such as the Ulster GP and NorthWest 200. Anyone who's attended a handful of these events is sure to have seen John on one of his sportbikes over the years, dawned in full race leathers with an array of bags and medical equipment attached to what looked like a backpack. This allowed him to have the necessary gear on his person to give a crashed rider the best possible odds of survival. While he did work with a full medical team at these events, he was still the only PH.D. On a bike chasing some of the bravest riders in the world.

The rest of his team would quickly make their way to a Crash site in order to further assist Dr. Hinds.

It goes without saying that John was a great doctor, but a lot of people didn't realize what a skilled rider he actually was. This guy was fast! He was sponsored by Motul, Arai, Dainese, Daytona Boots. He wasn't just a doctor on a bike, he was a racer who had a medical career. On top of this he was a really nice and likable guy. The mutual respect between John and the racers was obvious, it was typical to see John chatting inbetween races with the likes of John Mcguiness, Guy Martin, Cameron Donald and many more.

Making the world a better and safer place was something he was truly passionate about. John was also a fantastic public speaker who gave seminars to other medical professionals about properly dealing with motorcycle accident victims. His knowledge gained over the years allowed other first responders to do their jobs better. As an example in one of his seminars he explained, "When a motorcycle boot is properly fastened, the only way it will slip off the riders foot is if the riders leg rotates 180 degrees, (imagine your toes pointing behind you), therefor if you arrive on scene and a motorcyclist is missing a boot, you know at the very least their leg is broken". Knowledge like this was learned over the course of years by John and he was able to pass this on to those who could benefit from said knowledge. Full videos of his presentations are available on YouTube and they are pretty interesting (and at times funny) to watch.

Sadly in the summer of 2015, John Hinds hit a wall during a practice session while working a road racing event and died. The racing community lost a great friend that day. When this first happened there was a heartwarming amount of tribute articles written about Dr. Hinds, pointing out all the lives he'd impacted. One thing I didn't know about the man while he was alive was some of the behind the scenes work he was doing. John was fighting for an initiative to make helicopter response faster and more readily available to road racing events, making his own position obsolete in doing so. This sums him up pretty well. He was more concerned with helping others than he ever was with helping himself. He was just 35 years of age when he passed.

To me John represented so many positive aspects of motorcycling, contributing to something you love, bringing different people together via a common ground, a passion for going fast and a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. In a literal sense, nobody knew the risks of road racing better than Dr. Hinds, and while tragic, he knew and accepted the risks involved and ultimately died doing what he loved. Nobody can argue that his life being cut short was devastating, but there is an underlying beauty in my mind from dying whilst doing what you love and what makes you feel most alive. There was no pain, he didn't whither away from illness, one second he was doing what he loved and the next he was gone. He was lovingly referred to as "The Flying Dr." And "The Fastest Doctor", his legacy and work lives on and he is still greatly missed. RIP

Video of his seminars "Cases from the Races" are truly interesting to watch, he was a great speaker with a notable sense of humor. Linked below is one of those videos

https://youtu.be/MsZBXlTHPCg