Cleetus McFarland is going to get somebody killed...

If you don't think it's safe, don't get in it.  If you don't think it's ethical don't patronize them or their sponsors.

The OP is the problem with this country.  "Strong Jan 6th energy" is the dumbest thing I've heard this year.

Used to be a free country

There are many here that seem to have the opinion of "safety standards aren't needed, if you don't like it, dont get in".

Im curious where you draw the line with that line of thinking...

Are auto safety standards needed for new cars?

What about trains?

What about aircraft?

In reply to ProDarwin :

I think there should be a rating system for safety, similar to the crash standards for cars. It should be plainly stated on every vehicle that is sold. Beyond that, it should be up to the consumer to decide what they are comfortable with. If you are willing to drive a cheap car with level 1 safety, do it. If you want level 10 safety for your family, pay up and get it. It is ridiculous to require all cars to meet a safety standard and sell motorcycles across the street. 

Mass transit should have safety standards that have to be met due to the nature of their business. Moving masses of people. A good cutoff point would be 15 passengers. 

In reply to Justjim75 :

You missed the point of the thread - it's a discussion about how any safety related problems caused at an inherently unsafe "professional" racing event paints a picture for the rest of the racing, and more generally, the car community. 

Still is a free country, you're just acting like a victim.

Toyman! said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

I think there should be a rating system for safety, similar to the crash standards for cars. It should be plainly stated on every vehicle that is sold. Beyond that, it should be up to the consumer to decide what they are comfortable with. If you are willing to drive a cheap car with level 1 safety, do it. If you want level 10 safety for your family, pay up and get it. It is ridiculous to require all cars to meet a safety standard and sell motorcycles across the street. 

Mass transit should have safety standards that have to be met due to the nature of their business. Moving masses of people. A good cutoff point would be 15 passengers. 

 

And how do insurance rates factor into this?

In reply to ProDarwin :

You're conflating 2 very different things.

One is safety standards for the uneducated consumer for the very basic necessity of travel.

And you're comparing that to a voluntary race filled with willing participants that know the risk.

I'd be happy to actually debate your questions, but you framed then in a very intellectually dishonest way.

It's the equivalent of saying "since you think certain experimental treatments being tried on terminal patients is good, should we just remove all standards from medical practitioners?"

It's a false equivalence.

In reply to ProDarwin :

To address Toyman! - Reality is that the NHTSA NCAP scores are put on window stickers as a part of the law, so you can review while buying.

The safety standards are pretty much written in blood, so they provide a basement for the market. 

An example - the new-ish standard that requires rear view cameras had published, as a part of the notice in the Federal Register, that 210 people were killed each year due to backovers and 15,000 people were injured. Of the fatalities, 31% were under 5 and over 70 were 26%.  BTW, that standard came about because congress voted and passed an act directing NHTSA to do it (The Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007).

I mean, I get the "to each their own" aspect of what you want, but we are a group of people who know and accept the risks and are in a major minority when you look across the country. The difference is that the established basement "level 1 safety" (that came about over the last 60 years by elected officials) is a much higher bar than you are personally willing to accept and setting a basement helps things in a number of ways with design, development, and manufacturing costs being amortized across a whole fleet of vehicles. 

Pretty much every developed nation has a set safety basement they are willing to allow to be sold in their country. There is substantial similarity between USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, and Korea.  We are much more permissible to aftermarket and personal modification of cars than Germany and Australia are as an aside, so we actually have a fair amount of freedom relative to the rest of the world. 

It comes back to, if we know things can kill people (because they have killed people), we should do something to keep it from killing more people who may not be fully aware of how many people it has killed before...  Relying on everyone to know all of the potential design issues for a car, be it OEM or aftermarket modification, is a bit of a stretch. That and if you ARE aware of a potential problem and provide it to someone who DOESN'T know better, tie in negligence and see where your comfort level is.  At least aftermarket modification has a knowledge gateway to installing parts and intent that helps with ownership of negligence that can lead to a problem. 

I probably count as Biased, as I work in the automotive safety field. 

As far as the safety of the events, if enough of us who are knowledgeable cringe over aspects of modifications to the cars that are provided,  believing that it could hurt or kill someone, is it right or wrong to say something about it publicly?  Or should we just be quiet and say people got what was coming to them for getting in that car?

In reply to Gimp (Forum Supporter) :

I would imagine that your insurance rates would vary depending on how safe your vehicle is and an average of the safety of the vehicle you hit. Much like they do now. 

In reply to Apexcarver :

Complaining on the internet about what a group of people choose to do has zero value.  
 

There's this idea here that if someone is injured, it will hurt motorsports overall. I've seen enough drag racing accidents and road racing accidents here and everywhere else, and somehow motorsports are still happening.  Motorsports as a whole is an inherant risk that we accept.  Whatever happens at the freedom 500 is not going to make a difference to that. Sanctioned bodies exist with a jet strapped to a car going 300mph. Pretty sure those haven't made a single difference to your community, yet it's an extremely risky form of racing. 
 

the bigger risk to motorsports, is general loss of interest.  Not sure if you've noticed, but the younger generations don't care about motorsports like the previous ones did.  Tracks are closing exponentially, no one cares about nascar, and pretty much every sanctioned motorsport event is less than it was 10 years ago. So you can whine and complain about how it's not safe enough, or you would do it differently. But what is that accomplishing? 

Politics, name-calling, and other BS aside, losing a race track (in this case, two tracks) is never a good thing for our stupid little hobby. Regardless of what you think of Cleetus and his operation, there are two popular tracks that people use that will likely get shut down. I can't celebrate that. 
 

In reply to Apexcarver :

Education will trump safety equipment any day of the week. My kids didn't get run over when they were younger because they knew the punishment for playing around cars. They grew up around farm equipment with no safety shields, old trucks without seatbelts, and countless other fun things that would kill them. Yet they still survived. 

None of this is driven by actually saving lives. The politicians couldn't care less. It's driven by insurance companies who buy politicians that will use legislation to reduce the money they have to pay out in claims. 

Link to insurance campaign donations and dollars spent lobbying congress. 

It's pretty unsatisfying to see my senator at the top of their list. I wonder why they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year on elections and then wining and dining congress critters? 

In reply to Toyman! :

We get close to floundering, but I dont disagree that money in politics is problematic. 

That said, I deal with people who have lost loved ones to safety problems every day. I think its disingenuous to dismiss it as all being driven by election funding.  There are facets for sure, but its not a 100% money transaction as you would indicate. Its far more complex than that. 

In reply to Toyman! :

Insurance isn't even close to the biggest lobbyist out there.  
 

Cleetus is still getting clicks and money though!  

The only way for insurance to pay out less in claims is to have fewer claims, at least in the automotive sector. 

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Insurance isn't even close to the biggest lobbyist out there.  
 

No, they are just one of many. Too many if you ask me. $16.7 Billion was spent on the midterms plus another $3.2 billion on lobbying. The election business is big business. It's no wonder they all end up rich. 

If you want to know who owns your congress critter, look HERE.

In reply to Toyman! :

I know.  It is insane and needs major reform.

In reply to docwyte :

Well I'm hardcore freedom, so yes that's okay, sadly.  I still believe in personal responsibility.  I nor anyone else is responsible for your hypothetical brother's poor choices.  
 

Society today is so hell bent on blaming everyone else for their crap choices.  Stop it, you all are making things worse.  We have an entire world demanding special favoritism now that is responsible for zilch.  It isn't working.  

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

....which is exactly the reason we're even having these discussions. He's making money and revitalizing a race track. What a dick right? He should be in it for the passion, and let his racetrack fail like the rest of them.  
 

Faulting a guy for making money is stupid.  I really don't understand your hatred for making clicks and money. It's entirely the reason YouTubers are able to do what they do. Growing up watching power block tv where 75% of it was ads and you could only watch it Saturday morning, this is pretty great. 

docwyte said:

In reply to Apexcarver :

6 million + people were slaughtered in World War 2 because people kept quiet and did nothing in the lead up time to the War.

Yeah, if only there were internet forums back then for people to complain on. WW2 would have never have happened. 

In reply to lnlogauge :

Is it stupid?  Is putting money over safety some great benefit to society that I don't understand?  If money is #1, and it is in this case, then there is a real tangible societal cost.  Your desire to be entertained and someone else's desire to make money doesn't negate the potential huge downside.  Spending some of those millions on safety would send a totally different message.  
 

Mods should move this to Off Topic too, because it is.

That said, I don't have any beef with it all.  Everyone is responsible for their own choices.  Nothing in this world requires me to assume anyone trying to get rich is somehow altruistic though.  That ain't happening.

And let's just be blunter....  you don't screw window nets to plastic door panels if you are a race promoter concerned about safety.  You do it because money is practically all you really care about. But that's just stupid right? 

So I will naively attempt to bring this back on topic:

The issue at hand is a promoter of an event doing sketchy things when it comes to safety.  

First Motorsports has a long history of promoters ignoring safety at various levels; some willfully some through ignorance.  F1 top is tier in terms of safety yet Jules Bianchi died in an accident that should have never happened.

How many people drive 10/10ths in their street car at track days with the only extra bit of safety being a helmet. It's very easy to be complacent because the level of safety in general is so much better than it was 30 years ago. 

 As competitors / participants our only true recourse is to walk away.  I did this twice when I raced motorcycles and took a lot of crap for it.

 Vilifying people like McFarland will accomplish nothing; if people refuse to compete in these events and also point out why the level of safety is unacceptable then you will get change.  This is how pretty much every step in safety has worked in Motorsports since it's inception.

As a collective the best thing we can do is attempt to educate people on why things like backwards roll hoops and nets attached to door frames are not OK.  

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

It's one thing when its your own car, that you built.  It's another thing when the car is provided to you.  At that point I don't find it unreasonable to expect a certain level of safety prep.  In other words, if safety equipment is added, that it actually increases the safety of the car, not makes it worse.

Yeah, in downtown Denver people aren't being systemically rounded up and slaughtered.  If that's happening in the USA, I'd love to see a report on it by a large media outlet like the Washington Post, NY Times, etc.