Estoril

Which applies how in this discussion? (I don't see the the relationship between an Act of God totally random event at random, unpredictable location - and a fixed facility where we know there is specific risk in specific places). We shouldn't address glaringly outdated track safety features meant to limit serious injury of loss or life in a major off?

As is often said in HPDE classroom: "Gravel traps are where they are for a good reason. They didn't start there".

fatbillybob

People seem to want to fix the tracks, fix the cars, and certify drivers, yet the tracks are operating just fine under current standards with minimal deaths and able to operate because they can buy liability insurance as can SCCA PCA and all the rest.

People see this very unfortunate death at RRR and somehow want it to be a lightening rod to galvanize support for some kind of track sanitizing etc. Yet none of these people are staying in doors for fear of being struck by lightening a statistically more likely cause of death. A lightning strike is only death in about 10% of strikes and being struck by lightening is a 1 in a million event! By the transitive property death on the race track is similarly a 1 in a million event. That is why it is important to the discussion.

From NOAA:
Average Number of Deaths Reported. 30. Estimated number of Injuries. 270. 300. Odds of being struck in a given year (estimated total deaths + estimated injuries). 1/1,083,000. Odds of being struck ...

DTMiller

Ummmmm.... Yes, people should stay indoors during a lightning storm. People don't get killed by lightning in sunny weather. Lightning deaths aren't literally God's wrath from above for violating too many of the ten commandments.

People who die from lightning get caught in a bad condition or don't heed basic safety advice.

Similarly, people should look closely at the risks posed at a racetrack and do what they think is reasonable to mitigate those risks. Just like staying indoors forever isn't a reasonable response to the risks posed by lightning, "everyone should drive a NASCAR car with full safety equipment only on tracks with COTA level safety engineering" isn't a reasonable response to the risks on a racetrack.

stownsen914

Comparisons to lightning strike deaths? Seriously?

Ummm, % of people in the world who experience lightning in their vicinity: 100%. % of people in the world who drive/instruct on racetracks: not sure frankly, but WAAAYY less than 1%. Comparison of number of deaths from those two things must be one of the least valid comparisons I've heard.

Manifold

Agreed, the comparison is meaningless. It's like saying we shouldn't mitigate obvious track risks because we're each much more likely to die from cancer.

m3bs

Risk Management is all about probability and consequences. In the 30 years I have been doing this, I have made upgrades to my safety equipment to hopefully minimize the consequences as I pushed my car and myself harder and faster. I’m all for track improvements to enhance safety, but everything comes at a cost. How much can we afford? I just hope it doesn’t get to the point that insurance companies and lawyers shut us down in an effort to protect us from ourselves.

I plan to spend Monday at Roebling. I understand the risks I am taking. I just hope we don’t have any lightning....

docwyte

I agree an earthen berm is not an adequate safety feature. It should've been addressed long ago and hopefully will be addressed now. Same thing with Summit Point, that track seems to be totally negligent.
Track owners won't spend money until they're forced to, look at what F1 had to go through to get the track owners to step up and put in proper safety equipment...

Manifold

The problem is that a large percentage of those deaths and serious injuries were preventable by mitigating known risks. If the rates of deaths and serious injuries could be substantially reduced by making some changes which are feasible without unreasonable costs or other burdens, why wouldn't we do it? I'm not saying that all of the proposed changes are necessarily good ideas (benefits may not be worth the costs, and there may be unintended adverse effects), but I don't see how fixing obvious deficiencies at tracks isn't something we should push for, given that such deficiencies have been a key contributor to many of the deaths and serious injuries.

And BTW, the deficiencies at Summit Point haven't been due to limited funds to address them. The owner has been rolling in money from lucrative government contracts.

Fumes

You clearly have not been there lately. Denver is home, is it?

The truth is, SP has made huge safety improvements over the last few years and have made the track - left side of 1, inside of 3/4, 9 and 10 to name a few places - considerably safer. Not small investments, either. Our local DC/NoVA PCA chapter (Potomac, the first in the nation) supports SP efforts with a check every year to fund more improvements. They listened to our club and others, made improvements years ago, we support them, they made more changes, we react with more support and they keep making changes....it works. SP listens to drivers and Chris White is a solid dude who is reasonable and communicative. Plus, wifi in the paddock and the snack bar finally got taken over by Railside Market, which is the most important improvement and will measurably improve my life #deliciousSandwiches.

Sooooo yeah, negligent? Hardly.

mose121

There's an event there this weekend. Resting only means that other people's lives will be senselessly put in danger when it could be avoided. So go rest up while I look out for those that are being unnecessarily put in harms way. Hell, some large plastic garbage cans full of water or sand would be a better alternative to an earth berm.


Your response, although I'm sure well intentioned, is not an accurate equivalent. A more accurate equivalent to driving on a track with a safety issue like this would be running to the highest ground during a severe electrical storm and holding a 50 foot tall metal lightning rod in the air and waiting to see if you get struck.

Exactly.

POUR-SHA

Has anyone heard how the instructor is doing?

Fumes

Veloce Raptor

Seriously

deutschkar

AO

Sorry foor the sideline discussion, but I think it's important for perspective here.

Ummm.... you need to revisit your basic stats /math class. You're not even close. You need to establish from which population the stats apply to. You cannot include the entire US population when looking at track deaths - so I did a quick back of the envelope to help put things into perspective.

First, let's take lightning strikes. On average over the past 7 years, there have been about 34 deaths per year. So the ODDS of dying by a lightning strike in the US are 325,000,000/34 = 9,558,000:1

According to Wikipedia there a 84 road courses in the US. I notice at least 2 were missing, so I rounded it up to 100. Add in another 100 to account for AutoX events in the US. So we have 200 "Tracks"

I estimated an average load of 150 cars per track, per day. With 365 days in the year, that means about 11 million individual cars are participating in track days. Of course this number is really high, but let's run with it anyway.

Per your citation that there 102 deaths over the last 7 years, that means, and average of 14.6 deaths per year.

11 million / 14.6 = your odds of dying in a track day are about 750,000:1 in any one event.

So the odds of dying in a trackday event are actually over 12x that of being struck by lightning in the US - according to the data. There are gross assumptions at work here but it's far more accurate than saying you're more likely to get struck by lightning.