Here's the good news: Today's performance cars are faster and more capable than ever before. Here's some more good news: Open-lapping days at racetracks are more popular than ever, giving the owners of those performance cars the chance to approach the limits without breaking the law. Here's the bad news: There have been a number of fatal incidents in the past few years at open-lapping days, with both students and instructors losing their lives as a result of everything from driver mistakes to fluids on the racing surface.

After an incident last June in which an instructor was killed at Summit Point's Jefferson Circuit, I started hearing from my fellow driving coaches about a fellow who was advocating speed limits at trackdays. My first response was to chuckle. "A speed limit on a racetrack? Doesn't that kind of negate the whole point of going to the track in the first place?" Shortly afterwards, however, I started talking to "that guy". His name is Don Salisbury. His racetrack resume is as long as my credit-card statement after a race weekend. And he's not alone in his ideas. Not any more.

Next year will be Don's thirtieth year teaching new drivers how to get around a racetrack. That was ten years after he helped start the Blue Ridge Region of the SCCA. He's also been an IMSA crew chief and a flagging chief in multiple sanctions. He's seen it all --- and he doesn't like what he's seeing today. A few years ago, he started communicating about the dangers of modern trackdays with some of the biggest names in the trackday and racing communities, via a private email list. I asked him to share some of the insights he's had and some of the feedback he's received on two very controversial subjects: trackday speed limits and applying OSHA safety standards to corner-station workers at racetracks.

Jack Baruth: Don, what got you started in the instructor-safety movement?

Don Salisbury: It started when the Porsche Club of America instituted "extended passing" rules, allowing drivers in street cars to pass in the middle of turns with just a hand signal. Some of us saw this as risky. It was clearly meant to increase attendance at the expense of safety. And it was a wake-up call. We hadn't been paying attention to the increase in speeds. And there were other problems?

JB: Such as?

DS: Track walks, classroom work, and corner observation had all but disappeared from trackdays. You had novice drivers sleeping through the morning safety meetings and still being permitted to drive. It started when the economy went bad and attendance went down, so standards were being relaxed to retain as many participants as possible. So I started a personal movement, an email list to track incidents where drivers or instructors were hurt.

​JB: Why did you think this was necessary?​

DS: ​When the SCCA managed 99 percent of the road racing in this country, they gathered the incident reports. You'd have changes made the week after an incident happened. With so many organizations doing these open-lapping days, there's no longer any centralized repository for information about incidents and how to prevent them.

JB: ​Can you tell me how you came up with the idea of limiting speeds in Driver Education trackdays?

DS: ​That is easy: Structural integrity, kinetic energy and years of watching high speed incidents "tearing apart" and "balling up" cars in club and pro races with a large part of that being the heavier Showroom Stock cars. You have street cars without rollcages doing 150+ at some tracks. They were never designed to crash at those speeds.

JB: ​What's a good speed to limit to?

DS: ​There's no agreement on that yet, but I've suggested 90mph for novice drivers and 100mph for experienced drivers in street cars. As the speeds of Showroom Stock cars increased in the Eighties, the SCCA went from requiring rollbars to full cages and nets. The fastest cars were hitting 120mph in SSA. There were some catastrophic incidents and the number 115mph was used. At that speed because of the energy, rolls and "end over ends" were as likely. Going end over end in a car without a cage is all but certain to be catastrophic for the driver. And if there's an instructor in the car, it's certain to be catastrophic for him as well.

JB: ​What kind of reaction are you getting?

DS: ​There are a lot of instructors on my list who are "all in" on this.

JB: ​I've heard that famous "Speed Secrets" author Ross Bentley is calling for speed controls as well. That, or a requirement that unlimited-speed HPDE events should be limited to cars with full safety equipment.​

DS: ​Yes, in a recent email that he sent out to his list. As for the students --- well, you have to tell them that you'll let them make it up in the turns. And that it's a lot easier to learn proper braking at 100mph than 150.

JB: ​​So more and more people are focusing on driver and instructor safety. But you're already thinking about the safety of the corner workers as well. In particular, you've called for each station to have two flaggers, the way it's usually done at a pro race, instead of one. ​

DS: ​During my research for one of the articles I've written about worker safety, I learned of a new liability that may exist. At tracks that supply employees to man the stations, the track employees are likely to fall under OSHA supervision. The tracks must protect their employees so they develop procedures and protocols that meet advice from legal and insurance underwriters… Many event organizers do not know what the workers are capable of or what those workers should be told to do in an incident. All they know is what they are told by the tracks. Many of the track employees are in the same boat, they don't fully understand the capabilities.

JB: ​​And as a consequence, driver safety has been affected as well.​

DS: ​When you had two fully-trained corner workers at each station, you could respond in seconds to drivers who might need immediate medical attention. Now you have to throw a flag and wait for the emergency vehicle. So the response time to an injured driver has gone from seconds to minutes. So about a year ago I was asked by a very seasoned club-racing official about this. He has chaired a few club trackdays over the last 10 or so years, instructed for years but never been involved with pro or club racing track management. After I went thru this brief overview he said.... "We are driving in the dark."

JB: ​​So all of this needs to be looked at. What are some steps that we can take to ensure safety besides the above?​

DS: ​During flight training before you can solo your instructor gives you an FAA test. The test is designed to test your understanding of what you will encounter on those first few laps in the pattern. Your instructor grades the test and reviews answers you may misunderstand. Just before that flight. It could work here, too. More flag drills... meat ball and red. Require a couple of hours of corner working before driving on a track solo. But we need to talk about lowering kinetic energy in factory-stock cars first and foremost, before any of this other stuff.

​These ideas --- lowering speeds at trackdays, increasing the barriers to participation --- aren't going to be popular with everyone. Mark my words, though: If we, as a community of trackday drivers and instructors, don't start looking seriously at ways to reduce the risk, these decisions are going to be taken out of our hands and put in the hands of others. Lawmakers, attorneys, trial judges, and the non-enthusiast public. So let's start looking at getting our house in order, before someone decides to put it in order for us.