Motorcyclist down on the N7 at dusk: protect, alert, rescue
17:40 in November, dusk, light drizzle, wet road. You are on the N7 south of Luxembourg-City at about 90 km/h. A motorcyclist 40 m ahead brakes hard for a car turning across his path, locks the front wheel and slides on his side for roughly 15 m, ending up lying in your lane. You stop about 8 m short of him with your hazard lights on. In your mirror a van is approaching fast. The rider is on his back, eyes closed, not responding when you speak, but his chest is moving and his breathing is noisy. His full-face helmet is still on and the visor is up; there is blood at the corner of his mouth. Traffic is passing in the opposite lane.
1. Set out your actions in the first sixty seconds, in order, and say why the order matters.
Read the worked answer
Protect first, because a second collision would injure you and the rider. Hazard lights on, handbrake, put on your hi-vis vest before opening the door, and get behind the safety barrier if there is one. Then warn upstream traffic: a warning triangle placed well before the obstacle - around 100 m on this kind of road - but only if you can do it without crossing live lanes; if you cannot, do not. Then call 112.
Alert: give the road number and direction, the nearest exit or kilometre marker, the number of casualties, that the rider is unconscious but breathing, that there is blood at the mouth, and that traffic is still passing. Do not hang up until the operator releases you.
Rescue last, and conservatively: kneel at the rider's head, do not move him, speak to him, watch the chest and listen to the breathing continuously. Order matters because each earlier step buys the time for the later one to matter.
2. Do you remove the helmet? Reason it through.
Read the worked answer
As a rule, no. Removing a full-face helmet from an unconscious casualty means moving a cervical spine you cannot assess, and a badly handled removal can turn a breathing rider into a casualty with no airway or a severed spinal cord. The noisy breathing and the blood at the mouth are reasons to watch closely, not automatic reasons to pull the helmet off.
The exception is an airway you cannot keep open or vomiting that is obstructing it: airway takes priority over spine when the alternative is suffocation. Even then, removal is a two-person job - one person holds the head and neck in line while the other widens the helmet's base and eases it off, pulling the sides apart as it comes over the ears. If you are alone, and the rider is breathing, your job is monitoring and getting the professionals there fast.
If breathing stops, the calculation changes completely: start CPR, and the airway and chest take priority over everything else.
3. The van behind you stops and its driver gets out to help. How do you use him?
Read the worked answer
Give him a specific job rather than letting him crowd the casualty. The most useful task is upstream warning: hi-vis vest, triangle if it can be placed safely, standing where he is visible to approaching traffic and waving traffic down - not standing in the lane. The second useful task is meeting the emergency services at the nearest accessible point and guiding them in, since the exact location on the N7 at dusk is not obvious.
What he must not do is move the rider, remove the helmet, give him something to drink or pull him off the road to "tidy up". Keep the division of labour explicit: one person with the casualty's head and breathing, one person managing the traffic. If a third person appears, the fire service will need the turning car's driver identified as a witness - note the plate if you can do it without leaving the rider.