A heck of a lot of people must be kicking themselves right now for not
pursuing the correct installation of seat belts. If Jeff Burton was indeed
correct and DE was one of the people who did have them incorrectly mounted I
believe a travesty has occurred. NASCAR had plenty of time to read the story
on Monday and make sure they were checked before the next Sunday. I feel
really sad because someone apparently died due to ignorance and stupidity.
It is the sanctioning body's job to ensure the cages are the proper
thicknesses and the belts are properly installed particularly after the
problem was brought to their attention either directly or indirectly.
I feel it is time for the hiding of safety related matters to come to an end
in motorsports. The sanctioning bodies for the most part think of these
matters as dirty laundry that must be closely spin controlled. The main
argument for doing so is due to litigation concerns. But as a participant I
feel I need to have access to this information to make the proper
safety-related decisions. That includes how much or what safety equipment I
need and even which car I may decide to buy next. Unfortunately, the
sanctioning bodies may never give us direct access to their incident reports
much less put them online for us to peruse.
As an example of how much value there can be in having such information
online, check out http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Accident.htm and take a look
at one of the preliminary reports. The NTSB tracks each and every aircraft
incident. They already have one filed for an incident that occurred on
Wednesday! But that is mandated by Congress and I seriously doubt our
congressmen will insist the sanctioning bodies disclose this data to us.
To this end I am pursuing the creation of a web site to track racing
incidents, particularly those that involve amateur drivers. Due to legal
consideration we will probably not be able to provide direct access to the
raw data, but once the data is verified either by multiple submissions or by
the potential integrity of the submitter (race official or first hand
witness versus anonymous submission) it will be entered into a relational
database. You will then be able to query the database to determine such
things as how many Formula Mazda cars lost their roll hoops over the past 3
years (actually a bunch from what I've heard through the grapevine...), or
determine how many incidents with formula cars resulted in injuries versus
GT cars. Unfortunately, the names of the drivers will probably not be in the
database due to legal considerations.
If you have an interest in participating in this project I would appreciate
hearing from you. I don't see any way of making any money from such a site
so it will depend entirely on the direct involvement of people who want to
see something like this succeed. A number of wheeltowheel participants have
already shown an interest but we probably need more people to pull it off.
This naturally includes attorneys, web designers, server administrators,
programmers, accident investigators and the like, but if you have an
interest in participating I am sure we can probably find some way for you to
help.
Comments?
Paul Foster
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