The Critics Respond, Part Twenty-Eight

Yesterday, having expressed my disgust with the "Ferkel" incident on these pages in sufficiently forthright fashion, I provided R&T with a less furious version of my opinions on the subject.

In a sane world, the discussions in response to that article might have included questions like, "Should an event that gathers more than a quarter-million dollars' worth of entry fees have all the flag stations manned?" or "Is it really a great idea to let people race against 169 other cars on a tricky pro-level track when they've never done so much as take a one-day NASA HPDE session?" In this world, it degenerated into "FUCK JACK BARUTH AND I'M SO GLAD HE WAS IN A CAR CRASH AND HE'S NOT WELCOME TO RACE NEXT TO ME BECAUSE HE'S TOO WORRIED ABOUT GAY-ASS SAFETY AND STUFF."

Last night I stayed up a bit past my bedtime and wondered: Why should I even care about safety in LeMons? I don't have any plans to run anything besides NASA, SCCA, or AER in the foreseeable future. Why should I care if these idiots run into each other? What difference does it make to me if a bunch of people who self-select into being career participants in what is fundamentally a non-competitive race series don't have flag coverage or safe driving standards or even a reasonable number of vehicles on track with them? There's also the fact that every time I sound the alarm for more safety in driver's ed or LeMons, R&T suffers a series of troll attacks from people who profit, financially or otherwise, from the current state of affairs. To quote the Big Dog, my old business partner and spiritual advisor: Is this the hill I want to die on?

It was this post by Justin Howe that settled my opinion. It's not that I used to consider this guy a friend, or at least an acquaintance, and that I've tried to help and promote his writing in the past. It's not that I'm particularly shocked by the LOLZ THE KID COULD HAVE DIED approach he took; that's been a staple of my detractors for two years now. Rather, it's the fact that he is correct, after a fashion.

I didn't need to be on that road that day. I didn't need to have my son on the road with me that day. I didn't need to have my passenger on the road with me that day. But I did, and I did it because I had twenty-seven years of flawless avoidance in miserable Ohio weather to my credit. For nearly three decades I never even considered not driving in deep snow or ice or sub-freezing conditions because I had never made a serious mistake in those conditions. In fact, I thought I was pretty good at handling high-speed loss of traction... and I was. When I hit a patch of ice at 45mph in a turn, I kept the Town Car on the narrow road through two full left-right oscillations without stability control only to get hit in the door because I was still on said road.

And it was that confidence that led to my decision to take that rural road in the dead of winter. I didn't stop to think about whether it was a good idea to be out there at all. I didn't ask myself if the trip was necessary. I didn't consider whether there were things I could have done to reduce the risk, from waiting until the weather was better to simply slowing to 25mph or so for each turn regardless of what I thought I saw ahead.

I was confident that nothing bad could happen, because nothing bad had ever happened to me in those conditions.

That's blindness.

The same kind of blindness that affects everybody who thinks that running 170 cars full of untrained drivers at high speeds around a partially un-flagged track won't get anybody killed because it hasn't happened yet. It's the blindness that occurs when you are too emotionally involved with a situation to take a rational look at the risks.

The fact of the matter is that had the Trump Miata been punted at a slightly different angle, the impact from Eyesore could have killed or paralyzed its driver. The fact of the matter is that there is no excuse for locking up and hitting something that you can see happening maybe two hundred feet away. This graphic is going around right now and if you have any serious training or experience it will make you sick to your stomach:

If you don't understand that solving problems like that is part of a driver's job, you don't have much business racing.

So here's my decision. I am going to campaign for safety. For the safety of driver's education participants. For the safety of cheap-car racers who have no experience with or knowledge of best practices in amateur racing. For the safety of novices whose first experience on a racetrack comes in a Class C LeMons car thrown into the middle of what is basically an Improved Touring "E" race.

I am going to ask uncomfortable questions: about flagging, about safety equipment, about maximum permitted speeds. I am going to call out dangerous behavior whenever and wherever I see it. I am going to do my best to bring the discussion to a broader audience. There isn't much that anybody can do to stop me. They can get me fired from R&T. They can doxx me, harass me, make fun of me, try to knock me down or humiliate or upset me. They can ban me from their race series. I don't really care.

I am going to do my part to fix this mess. I am not content to sit back and do nothing while people make hundreds of thousands of dollars by cutting corners in for-profit trackday and race organizations. And the reason I'm doing it is simple: because I don't want anyone else to go through what happened to me last January. I don't want anyone else to see their loved ones in a hospital or injured or maimed because everybody was too blind to see the problem right in front of them.

It will cost me money and time and friends and who knows what else, but I'm not going to just drop the subject and move on. We can do better. All of us. We can make DEs and trackdays and races safer. All that is required is that we give a damn about it.

Those of you who are reading and want to know what you can do to help: it's simple. Just forward me information on any incident you witness or read about. In turn, I'll be communicating that information to the already-established working group of senior flaggers, officials, and racers who are building a database of contact and injury incidents across the country. Together, we can improve the situation. And if you think it doesn't need improving... well, that's something you will have to live with, eventually.