Serious injury, heavy bleeding, or anyone knocked out: call 998 (ambulance) first. This page is awareness for desert trips, not medical training — it summarises reputable first-aid guidance (St John Ambulance / Red Cross / NHS) in our own words and replaces neither a course nor a professional. The upstream page is rollovers and side slopes — prevention is the version of this page you want to need.

The first sixty seconds: scene, then casualty

The compounding disaster — a second car cresting into the first crash, a helper crushed by a settling vehicle — is the one this minute prevents:

  1. Stop other danger first. Engine off. Check the vehicle can’t roll or settle further. Put a person, or a car with hazards, where following traffic will see it before the scene — the sweep’s job in a convoy.
  2. Count people. Everyone out? Anyone thrown clear? Check the far side of the vehicle, and downhill.
  3. Talk before you touch. Awake and answering sensibly tells you a great deal. “Stay still until I’ve checked you” is the first treatment.
  4. 998 early for anything beyond cuts and bruises — with your position shared properly: the calling-for-help guide is the drill.

Heavy bleeding: press, don’t peek

  • Press hard, directly on the wound — sterile dressing, folded shirt, whatever is cleanest and closest. Gloves from the kit if seconds allow.
  • Continuously. Lifting the pad “to check” restarts the bleed. Blood soaking through? Add layers on top — never remove the soaked pad.
  • Bandage the pad firmly once bleeding slows: tight enough to hold pressure, not so tight that fingers or toes go cold or numb.
  • Embedded objects stay in. Glass, metal, a stick — press around it, build padding either side, bandage around. Pulling it out can open the tap you’re trying to close.
  • Watch for shock: pale, clammy, faint, rapid weak pulse. Lay them down, raise the legs if injuries allow, keep them warm — yes, in the desert: shock and the evening cold both justify the foil blanket.
  • Small cuts, different story: the desert enemy is sand in the wound. Rinse with clean water or saline, antiseptic, cover. Done.

Fractures: splint it where it lies

Signs: pain on movement, swelling, deformity, “I heard a crack,” won’t take weight. Unsure? Treat as broken.

  • Support in the position found. Hands first, then padding — rolled clothing, towels — immobilising the joints above and below where you can.
  • Never straighten, never realign, and never push on bone visible through skin. Open fractures get a clean covering; bleeding is managed around the bone, not on it.
  • A wrapped cold pack eases a closed fracture or sprain.
  • No food or drink for anyone who may need surgery — small sips of water only if help is many hours out and they’re fully alert.
  • Pelvis or thigh, or any fracture with a pale sweaty casualty = internal-bleeding risk: 998, lying down, still, warm.

The rollover special: when NOT to move someone

High-energy crashes — rollovers, ejections, fast bike crashes — can injure the spine, and a damaged spine often still works… until the casualty is moved badly. Treat the spine as injured if: neck or back pain or tenderness; tingling, numbness or weakness in arms or legs; they were knocked out or are confused; or the crash was violent enough that you’d expect injury.

Then the rules are short:

  • Leave them where they are. Kneel, hold the head steady in line with the body with both hands, keep them calm and still until 998 arrives. That’s the whole job, and it’s enough.
  • Move only if staying means dying — fire, fuel pouring onto hot parts, a vehicle still settling. Then: several people, head-neck-back in one line, minimum distance.
  • A motorcycle helmet stays ON unless the airway is blocked or they’re not breathing — removal is a two-person, last-resort manoeuvre.
  • The one override: airway beats spine. Unconscious but breathing and vomiting or gurgling? Onto their side, as carefully as hands allow. An open airway is the thing no casualty survives without.

”He walked away” and “he’s fine” are different sentences

Adrenaline hides injuries — reliably, for hours. Anyone from a rolled vehicle gets checked over, watched for an hour, and isn’t waved off to drive home solo. The convoy that treats a walked-away rollover as a finished story is the convoy that gets the 2am phone call.

This page summarises published first-aid guidance in our own words; it is deliberately conservative, and a half-day practical course — hands that have pressed a dressing, held a head steady — outranks it entirely. Nothing here asserts that any crash response makes the desert safe: the safe version of this page is the one about not rolling, and 998 outranks every paragraph above the moment doubt appears.