Side by Sides and Rally?

If they have to go on the outside of a turn, redesign your course.  If they have to go within 10 feet of a moving car, redesign your course.

I talked to a rallycross organizer who runs events at an off road park.  The course turns back into a general off road park hooning area after the scca event ends.  People run the course without cones by following the dirt tracks.  It sounded like he sees a side by side on its side after every event while they pack up the trailer.  His suggested that he won't allow them if he has to write an incident report every time one rolls.  It isn't worth the paperwork. 

ProDarwin said:

If they have to go on the outside of a turn, redesign your course.  If they have to go within 10 feet of a moving car, redesign your course.

Sometimes there just isn't space. Or there are features such as ditches, ruts from previous events, soft spots that need to be avoided. 

EvanB said:

ProDarwin said:

If they have to go on the outside of a turn, redesign your course.  If they have to go within 10 feet of a moving car, redesign your course.

Sometimes there just isn't space. Or there are features such as ditches, ruts from previous events, soft spots that need to be avoided. 

It's not even that.  Believe it or not, it's a safety thing.

Let's say we have a 40 second long course.  Always two cars on course with one starting as another one is exiting, so separation of say 25 seconds.  Call if a half minute to be charitable.  A car knocks down a cone.  The corner workers have 30 seconds to wait for the car to exit their area to make sure they don't hit MORE cones before the radio call, run over to where the down cone is (or are if plural cones), set back up, and run back to a safe location before the next car comes through.

For safety reasons, corner workers tend to stand near where the problem cones are, so they can run out and fix it and then run the hell out of the way again.  (Unless the corner workers are ignoring the course because they are too busy on their phones.  I am strongly in favor of a supplemental rule that says any cell phones found in use by corner workers during a hot course will be examined by a safety steward with a ten pound sledgehammer)

Either way, 5 feet or 50 feet, when a car rolls it doesn't roll right there and stop.  The car often tips up and the driver may steer out of the roll to try to save it.  Maybe aimed at a worker station on a different part of the course.  Hard to say, every situation's different.  Of the rolls I have witnessed, the cars ended up pretty far away from the actual course.

This discussion could go on forever.

IMO, if you are running such a tight spread between cars that corner workers need to be exteremely close to the course "for safety reasons", then you should increase your separation.

Also, if the course runs through features that prohibit putting the worker station on the inside of the corner, just modify the course so it does not do that.  Avoid that feature.  Don't put any cones in that area, so you don't need the workers there.  Etc.

Safety is the top priority, I wouldn't want a better course, more runs, or anything else to compromise that.