Truck Race Kills Eight: "Everybody ... understood the risk"

[Tiassa]

An off-road race in California became a spectacle of carnage when driver Brent Sloppy lost control of is truck during the 200-mile contest, leaving eight dead and nine injured. Federal authorities have barred Mojave Desert Racing, the sanctioning body for the race serie, from continuing its season on public land while the Bureau of Land Management investigates whether or not the event organizers violated any safety rules.

Sloppy himself has refused press inquiries, though posted a statement on his Facebook page:

"My thoughts and prayers go out to all the familys and friends involved," he wrote. "Thank you too all my friends for sticking with me even thru these tragic times I love you all."

(CNN)​

Keith Carty, a spectator who lost a friend to the tragic accident, told CNN's Headline News, "It's not anybody's turn to baby-sit us. We're out there. We understand the risk. Everybody that was there understood the risk: the drivers, the spectators, everybody."

As one who does not attend many live car races (I think I've been to one in my whole life), I do wonder: Really? I mean, I know there's a chance that something ugly can happen, but who really goes to a race expecting to die?

Certainly, there are plenty among the fans who, as Carty explained, want to participate, but ... really?

Brent Sloppy killed eight and injured nine when he lost control of his truck.
(Image via CNN.com)​

It's one thing to recognize a certain amount of risk. And, to be certain, safety regulations are a fair question. But at what point is it unreasonable to expect professional drivers to control their vehicles enough to not plow down spectators?

No, really, I don't know the answer to that question.
____________________

Notes:

Cable News Network. "Feds bar deadly race's organizers during inquiry". August 19, 2010. CNN.com. August 19, 2010. http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/19/california.racing.deaths/index.html

 

[spidergoat]

It's always unreasonable to expect a race car driver driving at the extreme limits of control not to go out of control. Study history, the 1955 Le Mans disaster is a great example. 84 people died including the driver, and 120 injured.

 

[Cowboy]

Assumption of risk is perfectly valid, in my opinion. Kinda like when you go to a baseball game, you have to know that you MIGHT get hit in the head with foul ball or something. It sucks for those who are killed or injured, but...:shrug:

 

[phlogistician]

If you ever watch footage of Rally cars, fans stand at the corners to get a good view, and it's a dangerous place to be.

Check out this vid;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkgV2f00IE8

Shows just how close the fans are to the crashes when they happen. To be honest, I'm surprised there aren't more fatalities. Seems the fans know the risks, although I don't get it. I've risked my life doing sport before, but not to just _watch_ it being done. That seems lame.

 

[Syzygys]

Perfect example of social Darwinism. Thinning the herd...

 

[Tiassa]

True 'nuff

Perfect example of social Darwinism. Thinning the herd...

Point.

Like this one time, when we were driving back to Montana for a Pearl Jam show. Our route took us close to a town we used to live in, so we decided to swing through to pick up ... something. Booze? I don't know, it was a long way before we could settle in and drink. But, hell, we hadn't seen the place in twenty-five years. Why not?

So, anyway, I'm standing in line at a grocery store—box camera! that's what it was—and these two teenagers in line in front of me are just loaded up with rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and bandages. And they're talking about something that I didn't quite understand at the time.

On the way out of town, I figured it out. We came to this place along the highway where there were twenty or thirty cars, pickup trucks, and jeeps parked. And one at a time, the kids were trying to drive up this impossibly steep grade on rocky, wet dirt. And then the cars come sliding, or in some cases rolling back down the hill to smash against flat ground.

I don't know how many people have or haven't been killed at that small-town pastime, but it sure as hell ain't healthy. I mean, sure, there's some risk involved in the roll, but maybe that's where the fun is. Still, though, the sudden impact when the vehicle comes off the grade cliff and slams against the flat ground just can't be good for anyone.

Naturally, we laughed until we thought we were high. And then we decided to get high, and laughed some more. Fucking insanity, to be sure, but yeah, I figured out just why it was so hard to understand what those kids were saying.

Maybe if I'd been high at the grocery store, I could have understood them.

 

[quadraphonics]

Keith Carty, a spectator who lost a friend to the tragic accident, told CNN's Headline News, "It's not anybody's turn to baby-sit us. We're out there. We understand the risk. Everybody that was there understood the risk: the drivers, the spectators, everybody."

As one who does not attend many live car races (I think I've been to one in my whole life), I do wonder: Really? I mean, I know there's a chance that something ugly can happen, but who really goes to a race expecting to die?

I'm going to say yes, in this case. If you've seen the videos, you know that part of the thrill of watching such races is that the spectators stand literally feet - and sometimes only inches - away from the speeding trucks, with no barriers of any kind. There's really no way for the drivers to adjust their driving to make that kind of thing safe (and still be able to call the event a "race," anyway - they'd have to be driving at single-digit speeds). Some of the footage I've seen of this particular event shows spectators literally moving out into the race track after trucks go by, to get a better view, and then leaping out of the way when more trucks approach.

If these events are to be made "safe," it's going to require setting the audience back considerably, and erecting serious barriers. The latter is especially a problem for this type of motorsports, since the whole idea is to race in the desert in the middle of nowhere. If people wanted to watch cars go in a paved circle from the safety of engineered stands, they'd just go to NASCAR. At the end of the day, the danger is part of the thrill.

It's actually surprising we don't have more of these types of accidents. They're commonplace in Europe, at races along mountain roads and rally events, where the spectators end up bunched along the few available spots, frequently on the outsides of curves. And such races are often held in the rain, so you can easily imagine the potential. Those cheapo "smash cuts" disaster-footage shows seem to have an inexhaustible supply of videos of such Eurotragedies.

On the way out of town, I figured it out. We came to this place along the highway where there were twenty or thirty cars, pickup trucks, and jeeps parked. And one at a time, the kids were trying to drive up this impossibly steep grade on rocky, wet dirt. And then the cars come sliding, or in some cases rolling back down the hill to smash against flat ground.

I don't know how many people have or haven't been killed at that small-town pastime, but it sure as hell ain't healthy. I mean, sure, there's some risk involved in the roll, but maybe that's where the fun is. Still, though, the sudden impact when the vehicle comes off the grade cliff and slams against the flat ground just can't be good for anyone.

Having grown up in a small mountain town, I saw plenty of this. Except where I come from, it's typically done at nighttime mountain keg parties, while drunk. This is actually a common enough occurence out there that parents of teenagers say things like "look, I don't care if you drink some beers and smoke some weed with your friends, just don't try to drive up any cliffs/get pregnant."

Also, the "smart" way to do this is with the doors open (or, better, in a Jeep without any doors at all). The idea is to jump out of the vehicle if it rolls back. And, yeah, that will actually make things worse if you don't manage to get completely clear of the vehicle...

The other popular drunken car activity out there is car surfing, which is what it sounds like. But that's kind of a mug's game, since you have no way to avoid flying off the car head first if (really, when - we're talking about drunk driving around mountain meadows in the dark) it stops suddenly. So usually it's done by peer-pressuring some insecure freshman who's never gone to a keg party before and doesn't know any better. Then the soberest of the peer-pressurers has to drive the mark back down to the hospital before the internal bleeding results in permanent, serious disability.

So, yeah, small towns are kind of morbid, in a way...

 

[Light Travelling]

Quite aptly named sloppy , I think


Some people have very little going on in their lives, and it seems they are willing to give it up for an exciting car race. :shrug:

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

As one who does not attend many live car races (I think I've been to one in my whole life), I do wonder: Really? I mean, I know there's a chance that something ugly can happen, but who really goes to a race expecting to die?

I attended quite a few races and other motor sports events when I was younger. I understood the risk and I was careful to choose a vantage where the likelihood of an out-of-control vehicle coming unglued in that particular direction was no greater than being run down on the freeway on a Saturday night.

Nonetheless, in my experience most of the people who attend these events fall into three classes:

• Young. The young always think they're immortal. There's not much we can do about that except allow them to occasionally see their friends disprove that by dying. Sure, we can make strollers that look like miniature Volvos, make them ride backwards and cinched down like cargo in our cars, put helmets on them when they ride their bicycles, and all we're doing is postponing their grasp of the truth until they're older and might take eight or ten of us with them when they do something stupid in an SUV instead of on a scooter.
• Drunk. I don't know how well we can protect drunk people. People get drunk for the express purpose of freeing themselves from the uncomfortable bonds of maturity and responsibility; in other words, so they can act like children again and believe they're immortal. They choose their own fate.
• Spineless spouses dragged along to something they aren't even interested in. Well hell, if you don't care enough to stand up for yourself, you've pretty much signed up to accept whatever happens to you.

As a former specialist in risk management, I would very much like to see the statistics on spectator deaths at motor sports events. I haven't kept up with the trends, but in my day motor sports were the most popular spectator sport in America. As a recreational activity, is going to a race any more dangerous than any number of other things we could be doing for fun? Of course it makes headlines when a couple of dozen people are killed in a crash, but how often does that happen? Something like fifteen thousand Americans are killed every year by drunk drivers, and judging by the level of action I'd say nobody really gives a goddamn about that risk. So why worry about something that's a couple of orders of magnitude less likely?