Cleetus McFarland is going to get somebody killed...

My despising the culture of glorification of willful ignorance vis-a-vis "redneck" or "Florida man" culture predates the entry of a certain notable polarizing individual into national politics. While many of us would make comparisons, it's not at the core of it, nor would it be appropriate conversation for this venue. It's probably good to decouple this worthwhile conversation along those lines from politics before it necessitates a lock.

I'm gonna knee jerk hard on the safety stuff because I'm a safety engineer, I look at bad outcomes every day as a job. I know I am biased. Lots of these things are a train wreck.

This will continue until someone suffers a tramatic injury and the lawyers come out and sue some people into destitution. Hopefully the things we all enjoy don't overly suffer from collateral damage.

Safety and YouTube popularity chasers is a common theme and I'll call it, it's not limited to this. Almost every popular motorized YouTuber has some flagrant failings. I could list channels I've watched that have problems, but it would be a long list. I'll be up front that I would have to include roadkill and it's child programs as an offender. Finnegan's pretty much admitted giving himself a spinal compression injury from stubby Bob. There's a lot of poor choices happening in very public ways. I mean, Finnegan's making some fits and starts, so there's something.

Another example that is more mundane, "cars and cameras". They souped up a lawn mower to go 60+mph with a very underrated power transfer system and suffered a drivetrain lockup at speed with only a helmet (thankfully they had that). They had a mild reality check, but then more recently have slipped on things again.

And it sucks that by watching I am contributing to the problem. If I comment I get called out as a weenie.  Fun culture, huh? 

What makes cleetus stand out bad, is the events he puts on, that's another level beyond just a bad example. That kid in the burnout competition... It's even worse than it sounds, the radiator was relocated to directly behind the driver with nothing between it and the seat. A hose popped off and it was directed at the driver. I felt ill watching the video of it and how he was shaking when he got out.  But yeah, "hell yeah brother, burnouts!" 

Imagine, you rely on popularity for your income and you go to this. You are publicly invited. What are you going to suffer to show up and say "uhhh, nope"?  

ddavidv said:

... I also thought the 'burnout pit' setup was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen. Anyone who got out of there with an undamaged car was lucky, not skilled.

Oh boy, yeah... this. I don't even know where to start with that "sport." The winning strategy seems to be to generate so much smoke that neither the crowd nor the cameras can see you. So... becoming invisible makes you a winner? Got it. It's a sport that I'll never do and am proud of it, because I care about (and pay for) my tires, engine, and cooling system.

Appleseed said:

Boy, I hope you guys don't stumble upon an Isle of Mann video.

If the TT was a bunch of TV personalities riding rusty bicycles with chainsaw motors on them around roads they've never seen before you'd have a point...

 Something like 250 deaths in competitions and practices, and in reality there is no safety gear on bikes at this type of event (that will do anything to protect you at these speeds), except a meat suit to keep your body from scattering.

At least the TT racers don't have a pretense of safety.

Looking at the rollbars and other features, I believe with all honesty that they would have been safer if the cars were left untouched.  Unsafe safety theatre is worse than no measures at all.

If the cage was attached to the frame and not the body, that is positively horrifying.

Isle of man tt also has rider licensure requirements. Bit of a different animal. More awareness of what it is and control.

In reply to Apexcarver :

Yet people still die gruesome deaths all the time. If the people getting in these crown victims were unaware of the risks they were taking, then nothing can help them. The made decisions and all the power to them. Didn't Bristol sign off on it?

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

That's hyperbole. To say the roll bars could have been better is fine. To say they do nothing is incorrect. I'd take a fixed window net over glass and nothing else everyday of the week.

These races are carnage, dirt track type racing and have been since day one. All of these participants were aware of what they were getting into. 

This whole conversation actually brings up a really good question: How the heck do demolition derbys, figure 8 school bus racing, etc... stay in business without getting sued into nothingness? Is it really just having a good waiver? My very novice understanding of the law is that a waiver can't protect a business from negligence no matter what the participant signs. It is also my understanding that negligence can be as simple as "a safer way of doing this exists, and your business chose not to implement it".

 Please help me understand how either-they aren't getting sued, or how they survive the constant outflow of cash to settle lawsuits?

I'm just kinda surprised in this day & age that these Youtube media empires dont have have some sort of legal / corporate handler to tell these bozo's "no f'n way"

Eventually they probably will, but in the meantime I'm sure there will be a tearful soul searching "apology" video after whatever terrible thing happens. 

Some points I would like to make that haven't been made yet: 

They went up and did testing at Bristol weeks before the event. So, I could see where they showed up the day of and Bristol didn't feel good about the safety measures but didn't want to scrub the event the day of. But if they were up there beforehand and there were concerns about safety gear, Bristol could have said something then and they would have time to address the situation before the event.

Also, the cars were probably safe when racing at his own track, because it's much slower, but Summit came up with the idea of taking the race series on the road to iconic tracks, which are much faster. Originally, the cars were completely stock in the suspension department, down to the alignment, and they had drivers ripping the outer shoulders off of the tires when pushing hard, which still forced drivers to limit their speeds or risk not finishing. But after the event before Bristol their fabricator took one of the Vics aside and played with the suspension, playing with camber and putting some wedge in the car, in hopes of not having half the field retire with a bunch of tire failures. It was found to be effective and was performed to all the cars, and while it eliminated the tire failures, it also made them much faster.

On the subject of their fabricator, he did not design the cages, he just welded them in. Those were designed and bent up en masse by someone who I've always thought was a pretty excellent engineer and who I would think takes safety pretty seriously, having even raced at Pikes Peak. Not going to name names.

A final safety point I haven't seen discussed is this: Even the safest, sanest, most levelheaded drivers can get the red mist. Kevin Smith was the guy that caused the pile-up, and he's usually a pretty polite and rational driver, but in his own channel he beat himself up pretty bad for being uncharacteristically aggressive and reckless in the heat of the moment. He said he was running down Hailee Deegan and the other car really fast but couldn't go three-wide around them, so he thought he could bump-draft the other guy around Hailee Deegan and then overtake him. He said in retrospect it was really dumb, and he ended up unsettling the one car and spinning it across and into Deegan's car, which put her into the wall.

MrJoshua said:

This whole conversation actually brings up a really good question: How the heck do demolition derbys, figure 8 school bus racing, etc... stay in business without getting sued into nothingness? Is it really just having a good waiver? My very novice understanding of the law is that a waiver can't protect a business from negligence no matter what the participant signs. It is also my understanding that negligence can be as simple as "a safer way of doing this exists, and your business chose not to implement it".

 Please help me understand how either-they aren't getting sued, or how they survive the constant outflow of cash to settle lawsuits?

I would guess a combination of people accepting and understanding the risks involved, and being too poor for a good lawyer.

Fun is fun. Participation is not mandatory, so if the people in the cars don't feel safe they don't have to do it. 

In reply to MrJoshua :

You're correct in assuming waivers don't do anything legally. If a company does s9metuing wrong and someone has a good enough lawyer a waiver almost never works.

It does work as a huge filter, people think it works and don't pursue it.

I think the trailer, bus and derby racing still exists because of the demographic that generally participates. In personal experience these are normally people that realize if they get hurt they take personal responsibility and realize they made the choice to race in an obviously dangerous event.

As a reference, the fastest laps were average 85mph.  

Not only has Finnegan given himself a spinal compression on roadkill, but so has Freiburger.  The stuff they do on that show is totally cringe worthy.  Full cages in cars with stock bench seats.  Harness bars that just go from B pillar to B pillar, on and on and on. 

Yes, personal responsibility, blah, blah but there needs to be a base level of safety that the organizer is responsible for.  If you're giving a whole bunch of people cars to race, they need to be safe, period.  Kind of like the Toyota at Long Beach celebrity races, that level of prep vs what was done here...

In reply to NickD :

That incident looked very amateurish to me. 

If you want to apply all the latest safety experience to all the fun, grassroots innovative Youtube channels out there then there will be nothing left to watch. 

By the way, Robbie Gordon was one of the Crown Vic drivers, and maybe his teen age son. Robbie of all people can decide what kind of risk is acceptable. 

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

Agree. If the people aren't involved are so concerned they are calling for more regulation. It just gets regulated into oblivion.

It's already causing amateur level track closures all over the US

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

By the way, Robbie Gordon was one of the Crown Vic drivers, and maybe his teen age son. Robbie of all people can decide what kind of risk is acceptable. 

Maybe not. Robby's son Max was running at the Stadium Super Trucks round in Nashville and was using all of his competitors as his braking zones, wrecked out a couple of people (including Cleetus, coincidentally) to win the round and got away with it.

In reply to NickD :

Who cares?

Rubbin'sracing.

The fact that this guy drives like a dummy doesn't mean he didn't make the personal decision that running the event was more important than the potential risks. To say the others weren't aware of how he drives, also doesn't make sense. The red mist is so common in all levels of racing, we have a widely used term that pretty much everyone in motorsports knows. I think most people are dumb, and I still have more faith in there decision making ability than most in this thread.

People do dumb stuff all the time, if you think it's dangerous don't participate, but if they are only putting willing participants at risk who cares?

Racing at any level is dangerous, people make the decision all day everyday, quit complaining if you don't agree with them.

Throwing rocks and glass houses or something like that

Kids getting started racing always crash their way to the front, even if they have highly experienced family members to learn from.

You know it occurred to me that the other way you can look at this is there were some big hits out there and no one was seriously hurt that I know of. I would say that they did ok in the safety side of things.  They could do better but the glass is half full I would say that there safety stuff got tested far beyond what they expected and they came out much better than they could have. 
 

Finnigans crash was is own doing. He stated in his video that in his headset they were calling the yellow and telling drivers to slow down. In his words he ignored it because the cars around him were not slowing down so he kept his foot in it.  That is just stupid. His crash was his doing. 
 

How many more did the same? We can assume those that were around Finnigan ignored the radio call out to slow down.  There is a lot of dumbness happening on that track. You can not toss Clietus under the bus for that. They had a system in place to warn drivers and the drivers chose to ignore it.  If this happened in a sanctioned event those drivers would be in big trouble.  

Wow. This thread. Some of you just can't  help yourselves when it comes to politics. 

I'm not mad at some dork on youtube for having fun.  I am mad that insurance companies have so much control over the laws of this country, and our daily lives. 

Cleetus and his gang usually do learn from their mistakes (Except for starting new engines with the turbo oil feed line unhooked, haha, they do that every time), so I'm certain that after this event and all the external discussion about it, I'm pretty certain there will be a a Come-to-Jesus meeting. They have revamped the safety rules for the burnout events, when he bought the track he immediately instated a rule about people were required to wear a helmet when out there and there was to be no one on the track without someone else there and watching, they've fiddled with the rules on the Crown Vic races already to try and keep people from turning it into a demolition derby. After George flipped the wheelstand Fiero, they had a big meeting and safety discussion and decided to leave that car wrecked as a cautionary tale. After the whole motorcycle-powered golf kart build-off, they decided to permanently park that thing, because even though no one got hurt, they recognized that it had the potential to really hurt someone.