This is one of those Neanderthal things I just don't get. The "he wronged me so now I'm going to beat him up/kill him to get my respect" crap. Seriously? How has a modern society allowed this to hang onto our psyche for so long? We're supposed to be this evolved species that has moved on from our primal instincts etc but we allow this "retribution" crap?
Sorry for the kid's family. The young man paid the ultimate price for his own arrogance and stupidity. Sometimes that is the way it is.
I don't get what the objection is to a "stay in your car" rule. Most other forms of racing have one and it's strictly enforced, and none of the problems suggested have happened. Remember a year or two ago an F1 driver got a 6-digit fine for riding back to the pits on another car after the race was over? Try setting foot on a live track while your car is not on fire in most forms of racing and you will get your ass handed to you in one way or another. NASCAR and various dirt track events are more like the exception to the rule. Fighting in ice hockey is a good analogy again. It's extremely rare for a player to straight-up punch a dude in football (futbol or handegg varieties), baseball etc, because again the offending players will get their ass handed to them in penalties, suspensions, fines etc.
In the offroad TSD I do, a few years ago a rule was added giving out penalties for getting out of the vehicle within 50 metres of a checkpoint. Not for any safety reason, but to keep lineups from forming at checkpoints. People would want to get out and check for damage etc. And it worked great, nobody does it anymore. If they want to stop and get out they find a convenient place to do it, there's no incentive to do it at a checkpoint because they "have to stop anyway."
nicksta43 wrote: Exactly, the question is how to ingrain it in these guy's minds to stay in the car?
You tell them to stay in the car or they get suspended for the remaining races in the current and next full season. Not from an individual track - for the whole sanctioning body. So, in this case... USAC?
Then if they get out you actually suspend them. If they die in the process... well, that is one suspension you don't have to carry thru with.
Datsun1500 wrote: If it's one in a million chance, no need for a rule, because it probably won't happen again. We will never agree that a "rule"" against getting out of your car will change things. To me it's simple, if he stayed in the car, he'd be alive.
And had there been a rule in place, "If you get out of your car, on a hot track, you may be subject to a one year suspension," he may have stayed in his car, because racing is what he loved to do and didn't want to jeopardize that.
Death is a risk all racers take. But to risk losing the chance to race at all poses a different thought process, no?
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:nicksta43 wrote: Exactly, the question is how to ingrain it in these guy's minds to stay in the car?You tell them to stay in the car or they get suspended for the remaining races in the current and next full season. Not from an individual track - for the whole sanctioning body. So, in this case... USAC? Then if they get out you actually suspend them. If they die in the process... well, that is one suspension you don't have to carry thru with.
That's creating rules and I'm being told rules won't help...
GameboyRMH wrote: I don't get what the objection is to a "stay in your car" rule. Most other forms of racing have one and it's strictly enforced, and none of the problems suggested have happened. Remember a year or two ago an F1 driver got a 6-digit fine for riding back to the pits on another car after the race was over? Try setting foot on a live track while your car is not on fire in most forms of racing and you will get your ass handed to you in one way or another. NASCAR and various dirt track events are more like the exception to the rule.
Well, one objection is that there have been numerous times when a driver was pulled from a burning or wrecked car by the first person on the scene, which was another driver.
a situation like that is when a sanctioning body has to be able to use some common sense
wbjones wrote: a situation like that is when a sanctioning body has to be able to use some common sense
Have you ever known them to? 
I'd like to believe that we live in a place that a person, driver or not, will not care about penalties to save another person.
nicksta43 wrote: That's creating rules and I'm being told rules won't help...
Anyone who gets out can't come back. So... it won't take long to get the message thru.
How about we flip the rule to an incentive based system... any driver who sees a person on the track who is not on fire can run them down. Cash prizes are awarded for each incident.
In reply to Chris_V:
It's pretty easy to distinguish between a driver getting out to pull someone from a burning wreck and someone getting out to throw helmets, punches or themselves at another competitor.
If you have a "No getting out of your car" rule to keep people from walking on a hot track, most sanctining bodies are not going to let it slide for good samaritanism. What if dude gets out to help someone else and gets hit? Now you're in the same situation and you have to come down hard on people.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:nicksta43 wrote: That's creating rules and I'm being told rules won't help...Anyone who gets out can't come back. So... it won't take long to get the message thru. How about we flip the rule to an incentive based system... any driver who sees a person on the track who is not on fire can run them down. Cash prizes are awarded for each incident.
Ohhh.... Carmagedon in real life? I may have to get into roundy-round dirt trackin'!
Chris_V wrote: If you have a "No getting out of your car" rule to keep people from walking on a hot track, most sanctining bodies are not going to let it slide for good samaritanism. What if dude gets out to help someone else and gets hit? Now you're in the same situation and you have to come down hard on people.
I'm sure there's some historical precedent for this, but rules can allow for this as well. As has been said, it's easy to tell when a person is getting out to help another driver. So the rules can specify that there should be no penalty if, where possible, the assisting driver pulls onto a runoff area to park such that he won't have to cross the track. Or even specify a blanket no-penalty for good samaritanism. Safety workers can get hit just the same after all.
"In case of fire" doesn't have to specify who's fire it is.
Datsun1500 wrote: How about a large sign that says "exiting the car while track is hot may result in injury or death" That should do it. All this discussion, and all we needed was a sign to prevent this.
The guy knew there was a chance of death, he didn't need a sign to tell him that, but the chance of horrific violent death at, let's say, 2% wasn't enough to deter him. Let's say, hypothetically, he was also facing a 1-year suspension from the sanctioning body for walking onto a hot track not for the purpose of escaping a burning car or assisting a crashed driver. Now he'd have a lot more to think about before walking onto the track and he might hypothetically still be alive.
And it's even cheaper than the sign! That sign's gonna be a couple hundred bucks at least.
This is probably really horrible of me... but I am starting to think "Why bother with a rule at all".
Let them get out of their cars if they are not smart enough to figure out running onto a hot racetrack is a bad idea. Couldn't you write up a a solid enough "hold harmless" waiver. Then let them do whatever the hell they want.
Why do we think we need to save people from themselves all the time.. Especially the ones who are clearly a special kind of stupid.
Stuff like this to me is like getting worked up over a kid getting shot after looting and beating up Policemen... Or acting like it is huge tragedy when one of those guys in the flying squirrel suits smashes into something..
When I die doing something really stupid.. Please don't make any new laws on my behalf.
Yeah you don't need this rule, I don't need this rule, but certain hotheads with not enough regard for safety need this rule. As a bonus, it keeps the bad PR down and it keeps their corpses from mucking up our cars, so we do benefit as well. It doesn't reduce my freedoms and I'm fairly sensitive to that sort of thing.
There should also be reciprocity amongst sanctioning bodies and tracks for violating such an important rule.
I'm not a rules lawyer, but if a vehicle was on fire, don't they usually throw a red flag? That would make the track no longer hot, meaning anybody going to assist a driver would not be subject to the "don't enter an active race surface or you are fined/penalized/shot" rule?
ronholm wrote: This is probably really horrible of me... but I am starting to think "Why bother with a rule at all". Let them get out of their cars if they are not smart enough to figure out running onto a hot racetrack is a bad idea. Couldn't you write up a a solid enough "hold harmless" waiver. Then let them do whatever the hell they want. Why do we think we need to save people from themselves all the time.. Especially the ones who are clearly a special kind of stupid. Stuff like this to me is like getting worked up over a kid getting shot after looting and beating up Policemen... Or acting like it is huge tragedy when one of those guys in the flying squirrel suits smashes into something.. When I die doing something really stupid.. Please don't make any new laws on my behalf.
Exactly.
What would I change to fix this problem?
Nothing.
ThunderCougarFalconGoat wrote: I'm not a rules lawyer, but if a vehicle was on fire, don't they usually throw a red flag? That would make the track no longer hot, meaning anybody going to assist a driver would not be subject to the "don't enter an active race surface or you are fined/penalized/shot" rule?
Good point, you're correct - once the red flag is up.
It's human nature for a lot of folks to say "DO something!" in the wake of a tragedy. As I posted earlier, we've seen it before. I refuse to get political in this thread, but our own government has been guilty of overreacting to tragedy many times in the recent past. I'm sure the sanctioning bodies involved here will do the same. Maybe it will help, maybe it won't.
IMO, it's not always a bad thing. The death of Dale Earnhardt led to the widespread adoption of things like HANS, SAFER barriers, banning open-face helmets in NASCAR, and the safety improvements in the COT. Those have made racing safer without making it any worse, IMO.
GameboyRMH wrote: As a bonus, it keeps the bad PR down...
There is no such thing as bad PR.
There is not a single spectator who would now avoid going to the track because someone died.
In fact the opposite is true. There are people who have NEVER been to a dirt track event who will now go to see what all the excitement is about.
I don't think a "stay in your car" rule is a bad thing and certainly not an overreaction. It would just be bringing the safety of one form of racing in line with most of the rest. What's the benefit of sprint car & NASCAR not having this rule that's practically standard elsewhere?
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