One of the things that really pisses me off with forums such as this is the
constant attempt to nail people to the cross over what is typically just a
misunderstanding or miscommunication. What makes it particularly bad is when
the person flames you as well.
People like Rocky don't usually post at all until they have spent a huge
amount of time formulating the best possible message. I don't know how fast
Dennis Grant can type but I can't seem to ever read one of his posts in it's
entirety. I don't see many typos either so he must either have a heck of a
spell checker or he actually proofreads his messages too. :)
I, on the otherhand, tend to shoot from the hip as the messages come out of
the internet at me. Sometimes I spend an hour or two, but all too often I
spend about 10 seconds, particularly when it is one of those threads that
should have probably died many posts before.
I think this is one of those cases. I innocuously wrote "Virtually nobody
quits road racing to take up autocrossing" at the end of one of those
threads. I said this from knowing a hell of a lot of autocrossers the past
14 years and I can only think of one person who fits this group. His name is
Jim Martin and you may not even want to consider him because I believe he
quit racing Formula Fords back in the early 70s before the first SCCA
National Championship. But anyway, I'll even include him.
But I never expected the reaction I got to this. Some people also knew of
exceptions. Wow. So I fired off the reply "OK. So we have 3 or 4 out of
50,000 members. I rest my case." Now the statisticians amongst us might be
horrified that I linked these numbers in such a way. I was in a hurry. Give
me a break.
But let's look at some "real numbers" that, mind you, are probably as close
to accurate as the estimate of the number of intelligent species in the
Universe. How many licensed racers are there in the SCCA? I'd guess about
10,000. How many licensed racers quit every year? From what I hear about
half the SCCA members quit each year. So let's say 3,500 because a lot of
the quitters are probably people who joined for only a year and never did
anything. How many years are we talking about? Twenty to make the math easy?
But I can hear the objection already. The membership hasn't always been
55,000 (or whatever). OK. Let's say 1,500 racers back in 1980 up to 3,500
today. I know the growth is probably more logrithmic than linear but I am
feeling lazy today. That's an average of 2500 racers each year who have quit
over the past 20 years. So, out of a group of 50,000, how many have taken up
autocrossing, e.g. who didn't already autocross before they quit racing?
Is that better?
Paul Foster
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