In reply to Apexcarver:
Joe, you missed my favorite one that happened about 10 years ago. At Frederick, some guy on a Harley turned into the lot and rode right through the middle of the course at full throttle and left up the access road to the upper lot. Fortunately, the car on course was heading down the straight on the far side of the lot. It happened so fast we only had time to say "WTF?".
hhaase wrote: Apparently these guys did.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czQClkc7Alw Came pretty close to soiling my undies coming around that turn. GoPro lens distortion makes these people seem further away than reality. Had it been later in the day when the sun was coming right down that straight .... might not have seen them so easy. -Hans
https://www.youtube.com/embed/czQClkc7Alw
Crazy.
sobe_death wrote:Keith Tanner wrote:The what now...?foxtrapper wrote: Mild counterpoint is the closing of the road I live on for various racing events, without notification to those of us who live on the road. A few times a year we can not get out of our homes, or back to them if we were already out. The various clubs and police that do this just shrug because they don't give a damn.If this is true, it's highly unusual. Upcoming road closures are publicized, posted in the paper and are usually pretty hard to miss. It's not easy to get a road closed down. One my wife's souvenirs of the Nike Half Marathon is one of the street closure signs, and it was up several days before the race.
Yeah, you can pretend it doesn't exist. But a lot of legal notices are posted there. Papers do serve a purpose. You have to stay connected with your local community somehow, or you lose the right to complain if stuff happens without your prior knowledge.
Ed Higginbotham wrote: In reply to hhaase: Mind if we share your video on our Facebook page?
I don't mind at all, Sharing is perfectly fine by me. I don't do facebook myself, so feel free to tweet it too.
We ran at one location that had a high chance of people coming onto the track. We set up cars to block them from entering; there was then only one entrance that was manned. Thankfully the only thing I've seen like that has had intelligent people who saw that something was going on and had us stop the course before proceeding onto it (Semi's that needed to use the pavement).
One of our previous sites was in an industrial park which was 95% unoccupied on weekends. There was a loop road that went around the course area. At the other end of the loop road was a gymnastics / dance studio.
Dance moms would drive their precious-snowflake-laden SUVs right onto the hot course all the berking time trying to cut across the lot rather than use the ring road. In fact, we eventually lost access to that lot because they bitched so much about having to drive an extra quarter mile around instead of straight across.
This makes me appreciate the limited access afforded by our site even more. The only issue I've seen is the police testing their high-speed toll setup in the far corner and getting close enough to the course to be distracting.
foxtrapper wrote: Mild counterpoint is the closing of the road I live on for various racing events, without notification to those of us who live on the road. A few times a year we can not get out of our homes, or back to them if we were already out. The various clubs and police that do this just shrug because they don't give a damn.
Do you live between Mulsanne and Arnage by any chance?
I was at an autocross at the Tire Rack a few years back. The club I was running with was using the skid-pad in the center as part of the course. Cars would enter at the base of it, go all the way around and then continue on with the rest of the course. There were a couple of trust-fund looking kids who brought their girlfriends who, incidentally and (as it turns out), unfortunately, were dressed like they were auditioning for the next season of Jersey Shore. About half-way through the heat, one of said trust funders, who was working in the center of skid-pad yells out to one of said girlfriends "Babe, bring me a Gatoraid". After a car goes by, she starts wobbling across the track in 4 inch spike heels she was obviously unqualified to operate. The only problem is, said car is making a loop around the skid pad and coming back. Its running wide open and obviously doesn't see the Snooki wannabe. I had to run out waving the corner flag like a maniac so she didn't get killed. The driver, who was heretofore enjoying a pretty solid run, was pissed. To make things worse, we had to hold start while she delivered trust-fund's beverage of choice and wobbled back across the track.
Keith Tanner wrote:foxtrapper wrote: Mild counterpoint is the closing of the road I live on for various racing events, without notification to those of us who live on the road. A few times a year we can not get out of our homes, or back to them if we were already out. The various clubs and police that do this just shrug because they don't give a damn.If this is true, it's highly unusual. Upcoming road closures are publicized, posted in the paper and are usually pretty hard to miss. It's not easy to get a road closed down. One my wife's souvenirs of the Nike Half Marathon is one of the street closure signs, and it was up several days before the race. There was a pickup truck decided to leave home during the Targa Newfoundland a few years ago. The other car on my team met him going the other way. Thankfully it was during the lower speed Grand Touring class and not the balls-out Targa class.
Up here we are require to post the Road Closure notices a month before the event, to ensure that people are aware.
We always have a few that people knock down or remove, etc.
We had a woman push a stroller with her small child across the parking lot holding the autocross, in order to cut a corner to get to the mall. She still didn't see the problem with it after we stopped her and the course.
I will never understand what she was thinking. We even had a rotary on course, so even if she was blind she probably could have figured out the imminent threat through some kind of innate genetic memory shared among our species.
Sadly, it's not at all uncommon to have people show up near the course and rip through the paddock to show that "I can race too!"
In reply to hhaase:
The big question is; why so late on that opening slalom?
Also, one of the autocrosses that I helped organize was interrupted by a State Trooper who decided that he should investigate these parking lot shenanigans by driving through a cone wall and parking his car in the middle of the stop box. It was veeerrrry interdasting for the FTD Miata that was facing the other way when the jackass pulled in. Of course, everyone was very polite to the guy. I was working the other end of the course, so I wasn't close enough to instruct him to get his car off of my hot course.
snailmont5oh wrote: In reply to hhaase: The big question is; why so late on that opening slalom?
I knew somebody was going to ask that.
Surprised it did't happen sooner. 
It was an odd day. The pavement on the other side of the lot was just re-sealed a couple days before. This was my first run, but a whole run group had already finished. So they had tracked a lot of residue over and I wanted to take things easy until I had an idea how slick it would be. Turns out it was extremely slick and just got worse as the day progressed. It didn't help that I'm still running high profile all-season tires.
Right about now I'm wishing I hadn't slapped this video together so quickly. GRM re-posted it (with my permission) via facebook and twitter.
That being said, still an issue with people crossing the course in that general area. Extend the fence further to one side, and people crossing around the other side now.
-Hans
You'll need to log in to post.
