I find that surprising. After all track days I am exhausted, both mentally and physically. I hit cruise control for exactly the speed limit and coast home.
[/quote]
This^^
I usually am so beat and so far from home that I just spend one more night, gety a good nights sleep and leave fresh in the morning. I have already missed the next days work/whatever and I owe it to my wife and myself and everybody else on the highway to get home safely. That means being alert for the 100MPH idiots!

 

Thats good to know. I could have swore back in the day some events (not SV) didnt have them.
[/quote]


Aaron errs on the side of overkill when it comes to insurance, safety, etc., which I certainly appreciate.
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You guys think Speed Ventures is that great all the time? Then why don't they have enough corner workers to even cover the whole track at Autoclub Speedway? Remember when that McLaren and that BRz tangled last year? They had no idea what happened when the McLaren didn't come around again. They didn't have corner workers that could see the area that the incident occured in. This is first hand info from someone who was instructing there and was standing in race control when it happened.

 

Aaron errs on the side of overkill when it comes to insurance, safety, etc., which I certainly appreciate.
[/quote]


You guys think Speed Ventures is that great all the time? Then why don't they have enough corner workers to even cover the whole track at Autoclub Speedway? Remember when that McLaren and that BRz tangled last year? They had no idea what happened when the McLaren didn't come around again. They didn't have corner workers that could see the area that the incident occured in. This is first hand info from someone who was instructing there and was standing in race control when it happened.
[/quote]

Could not be less true. I actually witnessed the incident personally; I happened to be DIRECTLY behind it. Red flags were out within seconds; I wasn't even 1/3 of the way down the back straight when the station in front of me already had a red out.

Not a single car passed me, and I had 3 other cars with me at that flag station, which means EVERY other car on track was already stopped before they got to the incident.

Who was this instructor? I was coaching a few GT-Rs that day.

 

Aaron errs on the side of overkill when it comes to insurance, safety, etc., which I certainly appreciate.
[/quote]


You guys think Speed Ventures is that great all the time? Then why don't they have enough corner workers to even cover the whole track at Autoclub Speedway? Remember when that McLaren and that BRz tangled last year? They had no idea what happened when the McLaren didn't come around again. They didn't have corner workers that could see the area that the incident occured in. This is first hand info from someone who was instructing there and was standing in race control when it happened.
[/quote]

Could not be less true. I actually witnessed the incident personally; I happened to be DIRECTLY behind it. Red flags were out within seconds; I wasn't even 1/3 of the way down the back straight when the station in front of me already had a red out.

Not a single car passed me, and I had 3 other cars with me at that flag station, which means EVERY other car on track was already stopped before they got to the incident.
[/quote]

I believe you Mike. I assumed it was that they didn't have enough corner workers. I could be wrong. However, something wasn't right with the incident. Because race control didn't have any idea exactly what had happened for far too long. The guy I know was hearing everything that was going on in race control. I believe he told me he was standing next to Aaron or Dave. There was definitely some sort of communication problem. Bad enough that the guy I know said he'd wouldn't do a track day with SV, at least at ACS.

 

At the end of the day we the drivers are the ones with the lions share of our own safety. We are responsible for our own safety and the cars around us.
I don't think driving with this company or that company , or under east coast or west coast safety guidlines solves the issue.
There is obvious danger when driving cars at the limit or at high speeds and everyone is aware of that.
I don't think having a corner worker every ten feet or three ambulances on standby would have changed the unfortunute outcome of this incident

 

There is a big difference in safety dependent on:
1. Skill level of the other drivers
2. Level of safety prep and condition of the vehicles on track
3. Speed of the vehicles and differential speed of different vehicles on track.

Take inexperienced drivers in fast cars = trouble.
Take inexperienced drivers in tuner cars on shoestring budgets = trouble.
Take crappy cars and inexperienced cars = trouble.

The main reason I started club racing is that it was so much safer at a regional level than HPDE.
The level of driver is generally pretty high, the level of car prep also high and the other cars on track are similar in speed making closing speeds very mild.

There are shades of liability you can expose yourself to. It's not a matter of "safe vs. unsafe."
I don't take responsibility for other people's prep. I just try to manage when they have deficiencies.

HPDE can be super sketchy if under-qualified and overconfident drivers with agendas think that they're "racing" at a DE.

 

Talk about a freak accident...considering what people are saying as far as where the car crashed. He must have blacked out or had car failure. @ the 1 min mark is the flag station that everyone is saying he hit. It does have tires in this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCbYkW5_C5k

 

FYI..its just a random video showing the station @ the 1 min mark.

 

+1

 

There's a lot of should have, could have, and would have going on out there. At the end of the day, this was a very tragic incident that happened despite the industry's attempt to be more responsible by "keeping it off the streets/canyons/freeways".

Like any high-focus, physical activity out there, there will always be some level of inherent risk involved. Even with all of the possible precautions taken, some level of risk will still be there.