Episode 13 Helicopter Heroes

If you are seriously ill or critically injured, every second counts

especially if you're up high or off the beaten track.

But, thanks to these guys, the people of the UK's biggest county

are never more than 10 minutes away from a hospital.

The Yorkshire Air Ambulance can do 150 miles an hour

and, every day, brings a new life or death emergency.

Five million people depend on these yellow helicopters

to bring life-saving care from the skies.

When a multiple pile-up closes Britain's highest motorway,

or there's an accident on the shop floor,

the highly-trained pilots and paramedics of the Helimed team are there to rescue the casualties.

Today on Helicopter Heroes...

a car passenger is catapulted into mid-air at 70 miles an hour.

Can the team save him?

Definite head injury. Pupils have blown one after the other.

Helimed 99 is scrambled to racing country

after a jockey is hurt in a training accident.

Open your eyes for me, sweetheart.

In the Peaks, a mountain biker is bleeding badly.

He went absolutely white.

And the team is called to a motorway shunt, and not all the casualties are human.

Everyone knows that wearing a seatbelt can save your life

and being ejected from a moving car is invariably fatal.

For rap artists, an appearance on DJ Tim Westwood's Radio 1 show

is a vital step on the stairway to stardom.

And rapper Warren Suggett, aka DJ Shifty, has made it.

HE RAPS

But just a few weeks after this appearance,

Warren is involved in a terrible accident.

A car has gone off the A1 at Wetherby Services.

It's gone down the embankment and through the barrier into the services' car park.

We've got four casualties.

There's a response car there and an ambulance.

They've requested us for a head injury.

The accident has happened at a service area on the A1 near Wetherby.

The wrecked car has come to rest yards from the main car park.

Grid reference is sierra, echo...

Paramedic Darren Axe knows people thrown from cars at high speed have little chance of survival.

On the A1, can't miss it.

I know where it is.

Warren is fighting for his life.

His leg is broken and he's sustained a very serious head injury.

One of them's sustained a head injury and a lowered level of consciousness.

The more the team hear about the accident, the more serious it sounds.

'Are you receiving?'

Helimed 99. Pass your message. Over.

'Helimed 99. Information with regards your patient.

'Query cranial bleed. He's got dilated pupil.

-'Query haemorrhage.'

-Roger.

They're clearing the car park.

Helimed 99. Roger, thanks, received. We're just about landing on scene.

It's lunchtime and the service Station is packed.

It will be a difficult landing.

Pilot Chris has his work cut out.

I just want to go round, guys, have a look where I can put her.

The lamp posts are feet from his rotor blades.

Have you got that sign at the side?

I have, yeah.

He's relying on Darren and paramedic Ben Anderson to be the eyes in the back of his head.

-Two small trees here.

-Got them.

Right over a car right now.

We're clear of the stanchions to my rear.

Close to this tree.

I'm more worried about this side.

But at last, Helimed 99 is down.

Clear at the side, mate.

Cheers, guys.

Ground paramedics have already started working on Warren.

He was thrown through the rear window of the car.

Over there. Right over the fence.

One eyewitness estimated it was at 100 mph.

We're going to help you out of there.

ETA, no less than, no later than 13:30, Ben.

Yeah, we're ready, yeah.

His pupils are wide open. Classic symptoms of a serious head injury.

He's been ejected from the vehicle at high speed. Been found at the bottom

of the banking. He's got a definite head injury.

Pupils have blown, one after the other, so it's a definite

head injury. Going to try and get him straight onto the LGI roof pad,

basically. They've got neuroscientists at Leeds.

Warren flew more than 40 metres through the air.

The fact he's still alive, is little less than a miracle.

-RADIO OPERATOR: You OK to talk, Ben?

-Yeah, fire away.

I've given LGI the info

and they've asked if there's any further injuries.

Yeah, we have a fractured tib and fib as well.

A life saving flight in helimed 99 is the best chance he has.

Most patients are flown to the nearest hospital. In this case, that's Harrogate.

But Warren's injuries are so serious,

Darren and Ben want to fly him straight to specialists

at the Regional Trauma Centre, Leeds General Infirmary.

-99. Go ahead.

-There's no time to waste.

LGI are happy to accept.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

Yeah. Roger, Dave. We've got a 20ish-year-old male. Pulse is 58.

Saturation level is 94. 9-4.

BP is 114 over 67. GCS is three, Dave.

Paramedics rate the conditions of their patients

on the Glasgow Coma Scale, or GCS. It goes up to 15.

Warren's score is just three. Barely alive.

-Right, I've started, guys.

-OK, mate. He's a bit brady, Ben.

-Sorry?

-He's a bit brady.

Warren's condition is deteriorating.

Bradycardia is the medical term for a slow heartbeat.

It could be due to internal bleeding or a brain injury.

-You clear left?

-Clear right. Straight up.

A difficult take-off follows every difficult landing.

But Chris knows the lie of the land now.

The accident happened less than 15 miles from Leeds. But it's still too far for Darren.

His SATs are going down, Ben.

His body isn't getting enough oxygen.

Unless Darren can perform a complex medical procedure,

his patient will die.

Coming up: Darren's fight for his patient's life hits a serious setback.

Just have to get this airway in, mate.

A retired police officer finds himself co-ordinating a rescue operation for his friend.

He's cold, he's pretty shocked, so we're going to secure him and hopefully get some fluids in him.

And the motorist whose lucky escape astonished his rescuers.

If you ride a horse, you're even more likely than a motorcyclist

or a rock climber to be carried in the Yorkshire air ambulances.

And no matter how professional you are, the risk is still there.

The castle in the market town of Middleham, high in Wensleydale,

was one home to King Richard III,

the man who offered his kingdom for a horse.

But there's no shortage of them now.

This is racing country.

And every morning, the local trainers exercise their thoroughbreds on the gallops.

But today, there's been an accident.

She's still there on the gallops. I've spoken to someone

who's with her. They said she's screaming out in pain.

She's still on the floor. It's a back injury.

Helimed 98's on the case of an injured stable hand.

And the route takes them over some of the highest hills in the dales.

-Nearly two vectors above the high ground.

-No worries.

Paramedics Tony Wilkes and James Vine know that jockeys

can be very badly hurt. Even killed. They can be travelling at 40 mph.

It could be serious head injuries, chest, pelvis, bones.

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

-You've got the group there.

-They've got the ambulance, yeah.

For the pilot, this is a difficult rescue. The last thing he wants

is the noise of helimed 98 to spook another horse into throwing its rider.

Amanda was exercising a racehorse when she came off. She's in agony.

-She hasn't got any...

-What's her name?

-Amanda.

Hi, Amanda. It's James from the ambulance. How are you doing?

-Just come down with me, Amanda. Nice and steady.

-Argh!

-All right, sweetheart. Give me your other arm.

-No!

Amanda was wearing a helmet, but she's showing some worrying signs.

That's it, sweetheart. Good girl.

SHE WHIMPERS

Smashing.

Right, Amanda. OK. Now where's it sore?

Amanda? Open your eyes for me, sweetheart.

Where's it sore at the moment?

Just in your chest. Any pain in your neck, here?

The horse trod on her arm,

but it's her chest that most worries James and Tony.

All right, Amanda. We'll just have a quick listen to your chest, sweetheart.

Excuse me, Amanda.

She won't open her eyes and she seems confused.

Falling six feet from a fully grown horse can cause a head injury regardless of a helmet.

The assistant trainer at the stables where she works reached Amanda first.

She was coming up here and, you know the leather of the stirrup, it snapped.

It's just an unfortunate accident. The horse didn't do anything wrong, she didn't do anything wrong.

Amanda's been working with horses most of her life.

She and around 60 other stable hands exercise the horses on The Gallops every day,

but they also have to do all the other jobs

like mucking out and grooming.

I'll get this secured to her then I think we'll get her up.

Just freezing now, isn't she?

She's complaining of quite severe chest pain,

in the centre of her chest, in the bone area.

There's a possibility she could have fractured her sternum,

a possibility she could have fractured a rib.

Obviously there's the lungs lying beneath there,

so possibility of some kind of lung damage as well.

A blustery winds is blowing and their patient is getting cold.

The team knows she must be checked out urgently in hospital

and for Amanda, the results of those tests will be crucial.

She's certainly got significant bruising and abrasions to her left arm.

Coming up, has Amanda ridden her last winner?

Hospital tests reveal her injuries.

100 miles per hour, multiple rollover, ejected from the rear window...

The fight to save an injured rapper begins,

and the patient who's had an accident, but still found it was his lucky day.

There's a number of things he could have hit and stopped quite suddenly.

There's a big tree there, which he's managed to miss.

OK, is there any serious bleeding?

When you dial 999, chances are your heart's beating faster,

your mind's racing and, frankly, you're not making much sense.

It's up to a calm voice on this end of the phone

to get the vital information that the emergency services need.

High in the Derbyshire Peak District, one call for help today was calmer than most.

The man making it was an ex-copper, but the case is very serious.

Mountain biker Trevor Bland

has a potentially life-threatening injury.

The brake lever of his bike has stabbed through his thigh

and he's miles from the nearest road.

Helimed 98, Yorkshire. We're airborne for south of Bakewell. Over.

It's tricky to spot a cyclist in the depths of the Derbyshire countryside,

but his friend made sure the Helimed team know he's there.

So it should be just round the side of this ridge.

The biker says he's going to make himself known to us, so...

Is that someone in the field?

-On the left.

-It is.

-Is he with a bike?

-He's waving.

There was so much blood pumping out of his leg,

that cyclist Trevor Bland was convinced he had severed his main artery.

Thanks ever so much for doing the big wave!

Luckily, his mate Dave Hobson, a retired police superintendent,

took control of the situation.

I'm just going to have a feel at your pulse, Trevor.

We're concerned it was like an artery, a really big one. It pumped, didn't it, Dave?

-He's an ex-copper.

-Was it actually squirting?

-Yeah.

-Pumping.

-Excellent. You stay absolutely still. You're doing a good job.

We knew something was wrong,

that it was quite a serious injury.

He'd gone absolutely white,

so when I saw it, I was really worried,

so we did the best thing, I think, to dial 999. Yeah.

I was fortunate that we had service on the phone!

-HE LAUGHS

-But let's hope everything ends well.

When you came off, did you have a helmet on?

Oh, God, yeah. It's there.

-Did you bang your head at all?

-No, no.

-And he wasn't knocked out at all?

-No.

Trevor and his friend David did exactly the right thing.

They stopped the blood flowing by applying firm pressure.

You just put pressure straight on.

Fantastic! You couldn't have done a better job between the two of you.

Brake levers on mountain bikes,

although they're not sharp, they are pointy.

When you hit them with some force with a fleshy part of the body,

they'll often puncture the skin.

That's what's happened here. But you saw how filthy it was.

We can't really explore how deep it's gone.

But potentially it's gone quite deep,

and his mate says he's seen blood spurting so hard it hit him.

That's got to be a sign that it's probably an arterial bleed.

If Trevor had punctured his main artery,

he could have bled to death in a matter of minutes.

But it looks like he's been lucky.

What we need to do is just nice and steady, ease the pressure off.

Yeah.

OK then.

You don't have to look if you don't want to.

-I'm not bothered about that.

-OK, well done.

I'm not scared of blood.

We're going to get this gentleman off the ground. He's had a nasty bleed.

He's cold, he's pretty shocked, so we're going to secure him

and hopefully get some fluids in him.

Trevor is soon on his way to hospital,

leaving his friend Dave stuck in the middle of nowhere with two bikes.

"Can I just confirm why he needs me to...'

BEEPING

'Hello. Not a medical need. However, he is cold.

'He has two bikes and two bags.

'How old's your mate?'

'55.'

Sadly, queasy flyers often find lying down in the chopper

brings another unwelcome symptom.

'You feel sick? No? OK, great.

'We're landing now.'

At Sheffield Northern General Hospital,

doctors discover Trevor was literally a fraction of an inch

from almost certain death.

The wound had missed his artery by a hair's breadth.

But his close shave doesn't keep him out of the saddle for long.

He tried out his bike again just three weeks after the accident.

And now four months on, he's racing around like it never happened.

I'd nicked the main artery,

so if it had been another three or four millimetres over,

then it might have been a different story.

It probably would have been.

We're not medically trained enough to be able to stop that one,

but we knew to put the pressure on straightaway.

Thankfully, Trevor hadn't severed his femoral artery.

But it was a scary few minutes for him and Dave.

He was saying, "You'll be all right", but his face weren't,

and he was covered in blood.

So I think he thought it was really, really serious as well.

He tried to calm me down, "You'll be OK."

But I thought that was it.

Coming up, jockeys wait for news of a colleague injured in a nasty fall.

'We have to presume the worst until proven otherwise at the moment.'

And imagine walking away from this.

One lucky driver did.

Now let's return to the battle to save a young rapper

who was thrown from a crashing car.

Sadly, his chances of survival aren't good.

Helimed 99 is racing towards hospital,

carrying a critically ill patient.

Rap DJ Warren Suggett was lucky to survive

when he was hurled from a crashing car on the A1 in West Yorkshire.

He has a serious head injury and his body is being starved of oxygen.

'Am I OK to undo my harness for two minutes?

-'You're free to move as you wish. Don't worry about that.'

-'Thanks.'

Paramedic Darren Axe has little choice.

He must intubate him in the air,

putting an artificial airway down his windpipe.

It's a difficult procedure, even on the ground.

Warren's teeth are clamped shut.

Darren must insert a tube down his nose and into his throat.

All in the chopper's cramped cabin.

'About three minutes.'

"OK, mate, just trying to get this airway in."

At last, they're on final approach to the Leeds General Infirmary.

'99, are you receiving?'

'I can see them, mate.

'Got 'em at the bottom of the ramp.'

The trauma team is already on standby,

but this is a fight the helimed team could still lose.

Warren's condition is continuing to deteriorate.

'I got here a bit faster than we intended, all right?'

Darren's job is over. The surgeon's has just begun.

Approximately 100mph multiple rollover,

he ejected from the rear window,

travelling approximately 40 metres onto the ground.

The man who kept Warren alive is in no doubt how lucky he is

to have reached hospital.

He'd sustained a closed head injury,

which was obvious from all the signs and symptoms that he was displaying.

He'd also sustained quite a nasty shoulder injury,

which had a lot of contusions to that.

And he'd got an open fracture of his lower leg.

The other injuries are secondary to the head injury

that we were dealing with, because that's the one

that will cause us all the problems in terms of maintaining an airway,

maintaining his breathing.

And maintaining any kind of level of consciousness

in that situation is virtually impossible.

Within the hour, Warren will be in an LGI operating theatre.

His mother has driven 50 miles to his bedside in a police patrol car.

Doctors have already warned her, his chances of survival are slim.

Coming up, rapper Warren is transferred to intensive care.

And why it's important to have luck on your side when things go wrong on the roads.

There's a big tree which he's managed to miss,

a wall he's managed to go over, and he's landed in a soft field.

Horse racing's not just a sport in North Yorkshire.

It's a serious business, employing thousands.

And when a jockey's hurt, many more people know it could have been them.

On the hills above the racing town of Middleham,

helimed 98 is about to take off on the 30-mile flight

to the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough,

with another casualty of the biggest local industry.

Jockey Amanda Mackin is lucky to be alive after coming off

a galloping racehorse.

After hitting the ground at up to 40mph,

paramedics James and Tony feel

she may have sustained serious internal injuries.

Let's get in here out of the cold.

That's a blowy day for riding horses, isn't it?

It's not good. It's not good if you're falling off.

-I fell off it, landed on my back, but we were on the hill.

-Yeah.

So I rolled over and the horse came straight over the top of me.

Oh, dear. Let's have a finger here,

then we'll have another listen to your chest,

make sure everything's behaving itself.

And then we'll have a nice gentle plod up to James Cook,

and get you sorted, eh?

'This is helimed 98 Just en route for James Cook.

'Requesting clearance for this stop and onto James Cook.'

'She's got significant bruising and abrasions to her left arm.

'Also complaining of an awful lot of pain in her chest.'

'We tend to presume the worst until proven otherwise at the moment."

'She has got equal air entry in her chest at the moment,

'which is a good sign.

'We'll get her up to James Cook and let them do further investigations,

a chest x-ray, make sure there's no ribs broken,

'no underlying injuries to any of the organs.'

She's been complaining of pain in her chest.

Now she's about to undergo a series of x-rays and scans

to establish how serious her injuries are.

Back in Middleham,

Amanda's colleagues at trainer Mark Johnson's stables

can't afford to dwell on today's accident.

They know this is a dangerous job,

but as well as serious injuries, there are miraculous escapes.

Fortunately for Amanda, she's just had one.

After ten days off work, she's back at the stables,

initially just doing light duties, like mucking out and grooming.

But less than three weeks after her accident, she's out on the gallops.

This is Amanda just coming up now

to the position where the accident happened.

Just about now, her leather snapped and she came off underneath.

So they had horses behind her, trying to avoid her,

which could have also caused more injuries to her.

But fortunately, all the horses missed her

and she was able to get to the side of the gallop.

I felt my leg getting a bit longer,

and before I knew it I was on the floor.

And I remember being underneath and thinking that the horse was like...

I'm going, "This is going to hurt" as she came over the top of me.

I've got quite a high pain threshold, but that really did hurt.

Amanda only weighs 47 kilos,

so it's amazing that she didn't do more damage than she did.

It turned out it was all just sort of muscular really.

I'd hit the ground with such force,

and because I'm not very big as well,

my bones had just taken the full brunt of it.

So I was very lucky to escape with just a sore back

and just be off for the ten days, like I was.

Despite her painful bruises,

Amanda couldn't wait to get back in the saddle.

Although she does admit to a few nerves.

When I initially got on I was like, "Hm..."

Sort of a bit dubious, but once I sort of got going,

I was like, "Oh, I'm all right. Not so bad."

Yes, but I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown.

But I was all right, really.

Coming up -

doctors deliver their verdict on the man seriously injured

after he was thrown from a speeding car.

A lot of things in life are all about luck,

including your chances of having an accident.

And every day the helimed team meet patients who've lost out in life's lottery,

only to discover they've got Lady Luck on their side after all.

The helimed team's Sheffield airbase has great motorway connections.

Both the M1 and M18 are within two minutes' flying time.

Which is a good thing for pilot, Tim Taylor.

-'This is the M18 now, isn't it? Yes.'

-'Yep.'

Today, Helimed 98's been scrambled to a shunt three minutes from base.

A people carrier's crashed and rolled over.

'Four people in the car.

'One person trapped. Could have head injuries.

'I've asked Leanne to ask the police

'if they can just shut it down both sides of the carriageway for us.'

'Got this fence on your right hand side.'

-'Yeah, and one on the nose.'

-'All good my side.'

'I'll take this bag here with me.'

Paramedic Paul Bradbury knows accidents like this

can lead to very severe injuries.

-60, 70 mph. Multiple roll-over.

-Yes.

Three people need hospital treatment,

but there's been one miraculous escape.

Saw the Picasso do four or five rolls,

then land up on the barrier.

Then I noticed a dog that had come out out of the Picasso,

running down the inside lane.

When you see a car rolling in front of you, it's not something that you see every day.

It was a bit of a shock really, to be honest.

Hello, mate. Just keep your head still for the time being

while I ask you one or two questions. Were you the passenger or driver?

Passenger, in the back.

What happened?

All I remember was we slowed down for some reason and then...

Bang! And the car just kept tumbling.

-All I remember was tumbling round and round and round.

-OK.

That was it.

Molly the Labrador didn't have the luxury of a seatbelt

and she was thrown out of the tumbling car.

Amazingly, she's escaped with a few bruises

and she looks in better shape than her owner.

The helimed team has to concentrate on human patients.

Back of your neck, how's that feel? That's all right?

So there'll be no check-up for Molly

until her owner can get her to a vet.

1, 2, 3, lift.

We're bringing in one male, 30 years of age.

Been involved in an RTC rollover. Approximately 70 miles an hour.

The human casualties of the crash

were almost as lucky as their canine companion.

The team want all of them to have check-ups in hospital

but none are showing signs of a serious injury.

The worst pain you've got, he said is just in your head.

Helimed 9, we're now lifting for Rotherham.

ETA will be 13.25, over.

Everyone in the car was released after hospital doctors confirmed

that there were no serious injuries.

Luck was certainly playing a part on the M18 today.

Molly and patient Ryan McCarrick have now been reunited,

amazed that neither were injured in their rollover smash.

Molly seems none the worse for her accident.

But she's still a bit worried about getting back into a car.

When it comes to surviving an accident, luck plays a part.

But what's more important

are the split-second decisions made by the air ambulance crew.

Today, the adrenalin's pumping.

A plane's put out a may day call.

We've got an ETA of about 20 minutes, over.

Roger, update from the police has come on.

It looks like the aircraft has crash-landed.

A fellow flyer in trouble means an extra sense of urgency

as these guys live with the same risks as their patient.

The information we've got is that

the people have walked away from this.

That may or may not be true.

They could have walked away and still potentially have serious injuries.

It's a first glimpse of the wrecked plane that cheers up the team.

The crew have indeed walked away after a bumpy landing.

We've got a visual with it at 11 o'clock.

In the middle of the field, nose down.

I've got a responder and coastguard

by 11 o'clock over the field.

The light plane had to make the forced landing

halfway through a pleasure flight.

The pilot is remarkably calm for a man who's just survived

every flyer's worst nightmare.

We set off from Fishburn about 8 o'clock,

towards Scarborough, just a run down the coast

and then back again to Fishburn.

I got as far as Scarborough, that was OK, on the way back,

the engine started missing.

I tried to land in this field

and I just made a bit of a mess of it, I think.

Modern aircraft engines are very reliable and failures are rare.

Pilots train for them but passengers don't.

We were flying down the coastline and we came past Whitby

and decided to come back on ourselves and head back to Durham.

As we were coming back over land,

the engine kind of became weaker and the propeller stopped and started.

Graham checked the fuel and all seemed to be OK but then

the engine was cutting out and at that point,

I think we both knew that we had to crash-land.

So we chose the biggest field and we came in just over the trees

and hit the ground quite sharpish.

The team know this could have been much worse.

The plane touched down in standing crops at more than 50 mph.

He brought it down reasonably safely and it's in one piece.

That's really about all I know. The crew both seem OK.

The doctors are with them now just checking them over, I believe.

Doctor Jez is glad his skills won't be needed today.

It's not clear exactly what's happened but it's clearly not landed

normally but there's not a massive amount of damage to the aircraft.

Both occupants are out of there and they're both fine.

Sammy and team know one mistake and it would have turned over,

trapping the occupants.

Whenever there's an aviation incident, particularly planes

that have come down or helicopters, it does make your heart beat

just that little bit faster because potentially you always imagine, what if?

But on this occasion, it was somebody else's misfortune.

As we landed, I expected it to keep going

but it was just a straight stop as it hit the ground.

He's obviously massively experienced, he's done well.

He's done brilliantly...

The pilot's done a great job.

Not just avoiding hedges and wires,

the manure heap could have made his day even worse!

He said that as we were coming down.

It would have been a really soft landing.

You'd still have been scrubbing!

It's an absolute beautiful day today.

It was a pleasure for us to fly, so when these guys took off this morning,

I'm sure their whole demeanour changed when they realised

they were going to have to make an emergency landing.

Fantastic that there doesn't appear to be any injuries.

Luck is a great thing to have on your side,

especially when you've just had a serious accident.

If you lose control of your car on the winding roads

of the Yorkshire Dales, there's no shortage of hazards to hit.

Today, luck was on the side of the driver of this car.

Normally for someone to be ejected from a car,

it either means that the vehicle's sustained such damage that the actual

mountings for the seatbelt have been pulled away.

Or more likely that a casualty hasn't had a seatbelt on

or not been restrained securely.

Particularly with this weather, it's very unlikely that that person

would have had a window down or a door opened.

So the chances are that they've gone

through a windscreen or one of the door windows, as well.

It's winter in North Yorkshire

and the roads about the village of Giggleswick are slippery.

It's not too good in the air either.

The weather is quite blustery today.

We're getting bounced about a little bit up here.

We're heading out to the west,

towards the west coast and that's where the worst of the weather is.

It may be a case that Ben and Chris in the front there

have to do a bit of navigating

to follow the valleys up to ensure we can get up to this location.

Driver James Mitton was at the wheel of his Subaru Impreza

when it left the road, cleared a dry-stone wall,

clipped a tree and then rolled several times.

How he came to be lying in the field is a mystery the team is too busy to

worry about right now.

Joe was the first on the scene.

We just found him in the field.

So he came through the wall,

fully-conscious when we got on the scene.

We felt he'd have a few more serious injuries. But it seems as though

the car hasn't rolled over him or caused him any injuries.

He seems to have flown out of one of the windows somewhere.

James's car is a write-off.

He's lucky he's not beyond repair.

It's largely thanks to the mud in which he landed.

Are you all right, mate?

Yeah.

What's your name?

James Mitton.

Where's it hurting?

In my lower back.

Dr Jez Purnell has seen too many lucky escapes to know that this one

may be too good to be true.

One, two, three, lift.

He was not in the car, whether he's crawled out himself afterwards

and doesn't remember it or whether he was ejected, I don't know. I suspect he was ejected.

He looks remarkably well, considering what's happened to him.

Have you any idea what speed you were doing?

I know it might seem a daft question.

I don't know.

Do you drive progressively?

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

You've just come into the field a fair way, that's all.

James is chatting with his rescuers

but he's hit the ground at high speed.

His vital signs are good but that might not last.

He wants to fly his patient to the trauma unit at the Leeds General Infirmary.

Hi, Darren, it's Jez.

I wonder if you'd accept a chap for us?

We're up near Skipton on the A65.

It's a guy who's come off the road into a field, he's come probably

about 100 yards from where he's left the road, he rolled it a few times.

James has driven his wrecked car for the last time.

But he seems remarkably unfazed by his escape.

Cold.

Cold?

Freezing.

It's going to get noisy now, James.

Not many passengers on Helimed 99 try to take an in-flight call,

even if it's from their other half.

I assume it's his wife that's phoning him up

to find out where he is. We can't really speak to her in here,

because she's not going to hear anything we're saying.

If we say he's on his way to LGI in a helicopter, she's obviously going to get quite concerned.

So we'll wait and let him speak to her himself.

I think she probably won't be so freaked out then.

James's car can top 150.

It will give Helimed 99 a run for its money.

But nothing else could deliver him to the LGI in less than 20 minutes

from the middle of the dales. It's finally time to phone home.

Ash?

Yeah, I'm at Leeds hospital, here.

I smashed me car up.

They're just taking me to check me over.

It's knackered, is car.

All right, I'll speak to you later, yes? All right.

Doctors here are used to seeing the effects of bad luck as well as good.

They won't be satisfied James is the luckiest driver on the roads

until they've completed a full set of tests.

Where's it hurting, mate?

-In me back.

-In your back?

And sure enough this escape isn't quite as painless

as it first appeared.

James has several invisible but serious injuries.

His lung is punctured.

And he's torn his oesophagus, the tube that leads into the stomach.

Both could have been fatal.

But within a few weeks, James is back on his feet

and visiting the Helimed team's headquarters.

I can remember coming out of Settle,

to the roundabout, through round the corners.

Then going through the last corners it's just a blank till I ended up

back in the field and somebody going, you'll be OK.

From... Well, just heard the air ambulance come

and then I can sort of really remember from there,

until I got to LGI.

The crash hasn't put him off fast cars though,

he's planning to buy another high-performance vehicle soon.

It was me pride and joy, yeah.

I'd worked for...24 years to get it.

I treated myself on my 40th birthday.

Then I went and did this to it,

which is unbelievable, really.

The patients who beat the odds thanks to the Helimed team.

Now, Warren Suggett was lucky to survive after a freak accident

on the A1 in North Yorkshire.

The Helimed team wasn't optimistic he'd live to leave hospital.

Let's find out what happened.

Thrown out of a fast-moving car, he landed on a grass verge.

But the impact left him with severe head injuries.

Motorists in the service area

where the accident happened won't forget what they saw.

Wheels started going everywhere, the bumpers came off, there were bits

and pieces of the car flying everywhere.

If flung it up in the air and it came down to land on the driver's back

quarter, which is when I saw Warren get actually thrown out of the car.

It was a horrific smash. The only thing I can equate it to

is something like a scene off the Matrix where there's big car smashes

or some Hollywood blockbuster.

It was just, you were stunned, really, for the first second.

Surgeons at Leeds General Infirmary

took four hours to relieve the pressure on Warren's brain.

Part of his skull was temporarily removed in a complex procedure.

His mother was rushed to his bedside.

People came to tell us about his injuries, prepare us for the worst,

really, before he went in, saying Warren might not make it.

Warren's family was warned he may be in a coma for the rest of his life.

But after just two weeks, he slowly regained consciousness.

The extent of his recovery has astonished doctors.

Alls I remember, I don't really remember it, just vaguely,

like coming off the edge of the bridge

and then I woke up in hospital,

a couple of weeks later, thinking to myself, where am I? Where am I?

And then I clocked the life support machine and everything

so then I knew. I was baffled because the bang on my head

and I was bleeding from my brain.

I had to get told off my mum and my brother and everyone what happened,

bit by bit, so I didn't have a nice reaction, do you know what I mean?

It didn't feel real though because I didn't wake up in any pain, either.

So I felt like I was in a dream. But then I was thinking to myself,

if I was in a dream why would I be thinking I was in a dream?

And I just started sending myself under.

But I'm alive and well now. Not well, but I'm alive.

Warren now has a long road to full recovery.

Warren isn't the Warren that we had before but it's early days.

It's only been six months since the crash.

And it can take anything up to two years.

So, there is a lot of time for progress.

HE RAPS

And part of Warren's recovery will be a return to rap.

He's already written a new song about his crash

and his remarkable escape.

When Helicopter Heroes comes back,

a disabled driver crashes his supercar.

And now the fire brigade must cut it apart.

He's basically gone from 70 to nothing straight into a tree.

The team fight to save a biker's badly injured leg.

He's done some quite severe damage to his foot and his pelvis.

On the road to the Dales, there's a serious accident.

Lady's gone over the handlebars and hit her head on the floor.

And a young visitor to a stately home needs help.

He was trying to get off the train and fell off backwards.