Jeff Winchell wrote:
> I would think it's obvious that extremes are silly, but reading so many
> messages about people worrying that one roll over in 13 years (or
> similar statistics) is horrible and we should do more to prevent that, is
> just as extreme.
Glad you brought that up, because I've been making some estimates to
come up with an approximate statistical model. Must have been those
statistical mechanics courses in grad. school. Bear with me, it gets
interesting.
Consider a "typical" region and assume an average entry level of 150
competitors. That's probably a bit larger than "typical," but, as we'll
see, that assumption tends to make autoxing look safer. Let's say the
average course length is 3/4 mile, and competitors get four runs per
event. That's 600 runs * 3/4 mile = 450 vehicle miles per event. I'll
claim that that's well above the median vehicle miles/event, but we're
trying to make autox look as safe as possible.
If the above region has 10 events/year, then their competition events
result in 4500 vehicle miles/year. And, if they have ONE incident every
ten years, that's one per 45,000 vehicle miles. If the region is smaller
or they have fewer runs at each event or the average course is shorter,
the accidents/vehicle mile figure for an incident every ten years will
be higher than our estimated 1/45,000.
Now, I can say from my own experience that I've had far fewer accidents
on public roads than one per 45,000 vehicle miles. In my case, it would
be more like 1 per 450,000 vehicle miles, or an order of magnitude less.
You were an actuary, you should he able to come up with accident
statistics for comparison with the above model to tell us how long we
should have to go between autox incidents in the above scenario to be
comparably safe to normal driving.
> If you want to live in a cacoon, fine. But don't force the rest of us into
> one.
No cocoon here. No blinders either.
> If a site location is so precarious that one accident will cause the site
> owner to cancel autocrossing there, then there are bigger problems
> with that relationship that should have been worked on
There was recently a Tour held at a site that had been lost to the host
region for several years due to incidents at Solo II events. Don't give
me lectures about site procurememnt and retention, I've been there and
done that. We aren't entitled to use of people's pavement, we have to
persuade them to let us use it. Accidents ALWAYS threaten that, whether
you like it or not.
>rather than
> boring autocrossers to death with absurdly safe courses.
A safe course does not have to be boring. Nor is a dangerous one
necessarily fun. You're trying to correlate things that aren't.
Jay
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