Paul "Won't somebody think of the children!?" Foster" wrote:
> Although it is hard to come to any sort of rational conclusion without
> more facts
...or without having been there...
> there are still a number of factors that everybody seems
> to be glossing over. This was a very fast section where the driver had
> to navigate a very tight corner.
So? That's part of this sport.
> Furthermore, the car ended up close
> to another car and in the proximity of the timing trailer.
Your definition of "close" seems to differ from mine. The rollee has
reported a distance of 20' from the start line and 40' from the timing
trailer. Assuming that one takes these estimates as gospel (and I do not -
very few people outside of golfers, hunters, and soldiers are any good at
casual range estimation, and in any case, the rollee has reported already
his uncertainty about the actual distance) these numbers are about 10 times
farther away from what I would consider "close". The rulebook specifies (if
memory serves) 25' of separation between course elements and obstacles.
That the rollee was able to have a high-speed "event" and only consume 5'
of the minimum allowable distance between himself and and obstacle sounds
good to me.
> Those appear to be the facts and they are not good.
And I completely disagree.
> And they should give the driver some leeway to recover from mistakes
> without having to worry about hitting something or someone. In this
> case it didn't appear to be the case.
See above. He got bent out of shape, slid for a bit, and rolled the car
over, but was still 20' away from one obstacle, and 40' from the other. How
much room do you want to see left? I don't think the average F1 gravel trap
is 40' across, and they deal with speeds 120 MPH faster than us.
> This sport is all about relative newcomers strapping on a set
> of sticky tires to their stock daily driver and having fun without the
> immediate concern of trashing their car.
Uh, excuse me? This was a NATIONAL TOUR. While it's always good to see
newbies attend the more challenging events, Tours are supposed to challenge
people at the upper levels of the sport. If a driver isn't prepared for
that slightly higher level of risk, well, OSB.
> This is not a professional sport where incidents can be shrugged off.
I hardly think incidents are "shrugged off" in ANY sport. Ask the Moore or
Petty families if they just "shrugged off" their recent incidents.
Yes, autox is supposed to be a "low risk" sport, and yes, we have a duty to
exercise due dilligence to see that it remains "low risk". But there is a
big difference between "low" risk and "no" risk.
The car rolled over. It maintained adequate separation between itself and
obstacles, but it _did_ go over. So the course was changed in an attempt to
reduce the rollover hazard. Sounds just fine to me.
> This is a sport where there should never be an injury. This is a sport
> where there should never be a rollover of a stock car owned by a
> relatively poor student.
Shit happens. It's unfortunate when it does, and we do what we can to
reduce the occurences, but you cannot catch everything.
You see a failure - I see a success. The car went over, nobody got hurt,
action was taken to prevent reoccurence, and the car in question drove
home.
> And I don't think our insuror is
> going to be too pleased with the number of recent incidents either.
None of which have resulted in a claim, to the best of my knowledge....
> Do we shrug it off or do we do
> everything we can to ensure it doesn't happen again? It is up to us.
We ARE doing everything we can Paul - the system is working as designed.
The only possible exception was Peru, where the failing was that of 220-odd
people failing to complain about an overly risky situation. Well, judging
from the fact that the course was changed here, it seems the folks at Ayer
got the message that Peru had to tell. This is a Goodness.
How about recognising this, instead of playing Cassandra?
DG.
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