As someone who flags pretty regularly and has for 6 or 7 years, I am dismayed at the report of this accident. I NEVER let the driver decide much of anything after an impact. (If you saw Scott Sharp's wreck at the Petit last year at T11, I'm the fat guy trying to get him to come to the wall.) It is my SOP to ask name, date, location, what just happened, how it happened, etc. I also ask about numbness, tingling, pain, and get them to wiggle fingers, toes, etc. if it is a severe impact. I've always been taught that if the car is stalled, you go to the downstream side of the car so you can watch the driver AND on-coming traffic at the same time. As far as leaving the driver in the car, that's an incident-to-incident call. I don't think I would have in this case, but I wasn't there. Remember that sometimes the safest place for you to be is in the car, strapped-in, with all of your safety gear. In regard to going to medical, it is a given at Road Atlanta, CMP, Roebling, etc. in the SEDiv. Race control always tells us, but they don't have to because we know. If you refuse treatment, I expect that you're going to get a great deal of push-back from the stewards. I don't think having your license suspended and having to go through a physical again before racing is too much, but I'm not a steward. Lastly, if the car was leaking ANYTHING, it goes on a tiltbed around here. I just wonder what would've happened to the poor souls at China Beach should he have dumped a bunch of oil in T4 during his drive-in.
Unfortunate incident. We are all amateurs and I hope that F&C, Race Control, EV, the Stewards, etc. will all learn from this and make appropriate adjustments.