Why Am I Risking My Life In Other People's Cars, Again?

It's been a tough few days for the racing community. Well-known Carrera Cup racer Sean Edwards was killed over the weekend while coaching a reasonably experienced driver in a GT3 Cup car. I wrote a piece for Road&Track yesterday discussing the risks of instructing and talking about a crash I had with a student in 2009 that left me shaken, if not stirred.

Apparently, at about the same time I was writing about having bad crashes with student drivers, my friend Jason Tower was experiencing one of his own.

According to Jason,

Instructed for nsxpo at vir yesterday, had a big off last lap of the last session. my novice student entered the esses at 110 mph and lost control, we went off track right and nosed into the tire wall at 90 mph. my (stock) seat broke and i somehow ended up in the back seat area! amazingly we both walked away, although i'm a little sore this morning

When I spoke to him later on in the day, he was ruminating about how hard an airbag can punch you in the chest (the answer is: pretty hard). He also shared with me that, as the tire wall approached, he felt the crash would be fatal. Ironically, it wasn't the impact that killed Sean Edwards; he was trapped in the car while it burned. Personally, I'd rather die when the car hits. It took emergency personnel three hours to remove Sean's charred corpse from the GT3.

Jason's going to coach again, and I expect to coach for a long time yet to come, but there are plenty of instructors who are giving it up. Too much risk, too many unknowns. I don't blame them, but I'm not ready to join them just yet. I'll be instructing at select TrackDAZE and NASA-Great-Lakes events in 2014 and am available for private coaching (wink, wink, ladies) across the United Stats and Canada. Just go easy on me when we're on track, okay?