I've had days where I felt the same. Fortunately, out of all the races I've been too (and raced myself for a few years), I have never personally witnessed a fatal or extremely serious accident. The worst that I can recall was probably at Knoxville in 08-09 somewhere in there when Jeff Shepard has his bad one. But there have been other times when I've wanted to quit my interest in the sport. The closest I came was the morning on the Chili Bowl when we woke up find out that Donnie Ray Crawford had been murdered. I just didn't even want to go to the track that day, but we pulled together and did. But long story short, I do understand where you are coming from there.

I'm a couple months shy of 65 and have felt more that way myself the past couple of years.  It's a young man's sport and I was dealing with the added fear of getting too old to side step spinning cars.  I shot my one and only race this season on May 7th, screwed up my back when I bent over to pickup a lens cap, and haven't been back out since that night.  I'm still following it online on these boards, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube but the bottom dropped out and I have been shooting street rods and rat rods instead of race cars just for something to take car photos of.  Like so many others who have been involved with things like writing and photography I don't find the thought of sitting in the stands appealing.  I always traveled alone and worked out of my van with the camera gear so if I were to go to spectate I wouldn't even have anyone to sit with. 

I don't know why but I had a bad feeling going into all this racing on the big half miles the next week or so.  I guess that's probably just part of getting old and being detached from the weekly goings on at the track and over thinking the possibilities.  I'll be listening to FRC on the Iowa radio station that covers the track tonight but I'm a lot more tentative about racing for some reason.

Stan Meissner

There is not one driver that doesn't know the risks and totally accepts them. They love this sport 

more than you can imagine and the last thing any driver would want are fans quitting because they get hurt

or killed. I know Brian and I gauruntee you he would want us to move on and keep the sport going. It's sad at first 

but you get over it knowing that they are at peace with their decision to race. Death is all around us. We all have our

time, enjoy it while you can and support the races these brave men love to do so much. That's what they would want. 

He will be in my prayers today for a full recovery.  

Racing is a dangerous game, always has been but it's also getting safer all the time. I've lost friends racing and hated that it happened but I accept it for the sport that I love.

Exactly. People die in traffic accidents every single day and we still drive our cars around. Tragedies are just that: tragic. It sucks when bad things happen in racing or elsewhere but at the same time, life goes on. We all know the risks involved with everything we do and we accept them for what they are. For some those boundries exist far beyond the fringes of what "regular" people like us can even begin to comprehend. I've said it before and I'll say it again, sprint car drivers are the bravest souls on earth. Sure there's cars that go faster but when it comes down to it, in 2016, sprint cars are by far the most dangerous form of dirt track racing that exists. These guys know that and they THRIVE on it. Not only are they so competitive that most of them would slide Jesus himself to win a race but the thrill of going out there and dancing with death every single night is a part of who they are and they live for it. I've witnessed 2 fatalities over the years and I damned sure don't want to see another but I can't ever see myself being pushed away from the sport over it unless it would be a close loved one or something along those lines. But that's just me. We're all different and there is no right or wrong. Continued thoughts and prayers to Bryan and his family.

Ok, but how did this particular accident put you over the edge?   Why at a time when all sanctioning bodies continue to improve on safety?    I understand u feel this way, but how did u make it thru all of the years of fatality after fatality and then quit after a racer gets put in the hospital in stable condition?   

I think it's an age thing as well.  When a person gets up to their mid 60's with grandkids and the like and in my case nobody else in the family interested in racing it's hard to justify this stuff to a non-racing family.  I'm no rookie as far as racing goes after writing articles for papers and magazines and taking hundreds of racing photos.  To tell someone like me who's first race was a cageless, wingless Sprint Fairgrounds race in 1960 is kinda like preachin' to the choir.  I understand the risks and all the cliches I have echoed hundreds of times myself but I guess the family got to me because I find myself second guessing it a lot more.  I'm not done by any means, I'll still shoot a little now and then, but I'm only doing it two or three times a season and picking my spots carefully. 

Stan Meissner

I get what you are saying.  I have witnessed one fatal accident and that is one too many.  As a pure spectator, I try to purchase safe seats to mimimize risk for myself and my family. 

I haven't ever gone to the races to see wrecks and I always pray for the safety of the racers, crews, officials, media, etc.  However, I sleep at night knowing that everyone that puts themselves in harm's way at the racetrack, fully understands the risks and loves what they are doing no matter what those risks are.  Putting an end to racing would be a reasonable idea if there were harm done to those who did not understand the risks--innocent bystanders.  However, there are no innocent bystanders at a racetrack.  All of those on the track, in the pits, and even me--thinking I am safe in the top row--have accepted these risks. 

All of that being said, praying for a full recovery for Bryan. 

I hate it when a driver gets injured just as much as any fan. I'm also 65 and have acknowledged my own mortality many years ago.  I too will continue to enjoy the good of the sport and continue to follow the racing. I'll never forget the perspective Richard Petty had when his grandson Adam was fataly injured in a race car. I don't remember it well enough to quote, but what he said esentially was this.....He referred to farmers having lost lives while farming, and I believe he said "if we were farmers we would go right on farming.....but we aren't farmers, we race for a living, so we will go on racing." I lost a son, too, so I know how Kyle Petty'e heart was aching during that time. But our family had to go on living just as the Pettys did. Prayers and thoughts for Bryan and his entire family, and a special heartfelt prayer that they don't lose him!

I personally would like to see the halo bar made mandatory starting next year. Driver will never do it on their own due to their desire to win and not give up any competitive edge. If everyone has it there's no advantage.  Everyone is the same. With a halo bar we still may have Billy Kimmel with us, Jeff Shepard's injury's may have been drastically reduced and he may still be entertaining us all on the race track.............. and maybe, just maybe BC survives. 

Days like this makes me want to walk away also. But I also believe BC would want his fellow racers to race..and the fans to continue to watch and keep the sport going on

When I heard the news about Bryan's passing I checked my files from last season to see if he raced at any of the events I attended.  My memory isn't that good but I found that I do have some photos of the 17w.  I did not become familiar with Bryan until this year when he ran Indy and I heard his story.  This shot was taken on September 12, 2015, at the Cedar Lake Speedway, the Jerry Richert Sr. Memorial race.  I'm reading so many great things about him and now I wish I had paid closer attention to his career.  It's a very sad time for all of racing. 

Stan Meissner

People can talk about the grief and how they are done with the sport and how "senseless" this incident was. We are all sad in that the sport lost a really good racer and we share in his family and friends' loss. This wasn't senseless. If it was, what Bryan was doing would have no meaning. And we know he touched many lives, so what he was doing meant something. That said, the racing goes on even on the night of a tragedy and has in hundreds of tragic nights before. This is a hard, cruel reality of a hard and cruel sport. We have all known people who lost loved ones to the sport and still came back to the track the next week and continued to support the sport in many ways right up to the day the pass on themselves. If, as fans, people would walk away from the sport after every tragic incident there wouldn't be anybody left and the sport itself would die. The guys that raced at Belleville Saturday pay their respects in their own ways and go on to the next race. There's 100 drivers and 25,000 fans at Knoxville this week. The sport and life go on. Feel badly, as you should, for a bit and then go on with a smile as you remember Bryan as a wonderful talent as as a really good guy. This too, like all things, shall pass.

We all feel your pain. He died way to young, but he died doing what he loved to do, on top of the sport, and without pain. And even though he was young racing afforded him an extremely full life of family, friends and travel, much more than most people will ever know. God speed from fans and admirers from around the world.

Safety is a never ending battle, but it has come a long way in sprint car racing in recent years. Golf carts send 13,000 Americans to the emergency room each year and you don't hear much about it. There are a million ways to die and we will all meet our maker eventually.

Golf cart deaths more common than thought

By Eddie Daniels | Tribune Staff

Erika Robinson was devoted to her family and determined to make sure her 5-year-old son spent quality time with his father, Nathaniel Williams. On Saturday, she and her son, Graham — nicknamed "Bub" — headed to Williams' Land O'Lakes home for a visit. Leaving Graham with friends for a few minutes, she and Williams decided to take a ride through the neighborhood in a golf cart around 10 p.m. "Apparently they were just going to take a quick spin because they didn't even take Bub with them," said her father, Ted Robinson. His daughter rarely left Bub's side, he said. On the ride, Williams, who was behind the wheel, took a sharp left turn on Sheffield Road. Robinson, 27, fell out of the cart and hit her head on the pavement. A few hours later, she was dead. According to a safety expert who studies golf cart accidents, deaths and serious injuries happen far more often than people realize. "News media always describe them as freak accidents, but they are not," said Kristopher Seluga, who works for Technology Associates, a Connecticut-based company that reconstructs accidents. "Somebody dies every week in this country from falling out of a golf cart." Most often, it involves a left turn. The passenger has no place to hold onto, and the rail on the outside of the vehicle acts as a fulcrum that causes the person to fall up and over, onto his or her head. That scenario was similar to what happened to Robinson. Christopher Grainger, 16, said his parents were watching a movie when Williams arrived, frantic, on their doorstep, directly across the street from the accident. Grainger grabbed a flashlight and headed out with his mother, Lisa Grainger, to help. She spoke to a 911 dispatcher, relaying CPR instructions to Williams as he tried to save Robinson. "I felt bad for the guy and the girl," Christopher Grainger said. "The guy was pretty devastated, worried, shocked, didn't know what to do. The girl was unconscious." About 13,000 golf cart-related accidents require emergency room visits each year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Seluga would like to see all golf carts have seat belts and a hand rail on the inside of the cart. Children are more likely to fall because they are unable to brace their feet on the floorboard, Seluga said. In 2010, Gabriella Wiegert, 6, died when she fell from a golf cart her sister was driving. Her father, Shannon Wiegert, started an online petition to get the Florida Legislature to require helmets and seat belts on the carts. About a year after his daughter's death, he killed himself at his Lakeland home. Florida doesn't require seat belts and allows children as young as 14 to drive golf carts.

 
 
 
They don't even know how to spell sprint car 
much less chromoly...http://www.ycmco.com

some men are satisfied with being average. some men can wake up and live a daily routine over and over again till they pass away at 87. some men never step out of their comfort zone.  There ARE men who are content with being nothing more than what they are. Never leaving the safety of the nest, never knowing what they are capable of...  Then there are men that don't have average in their DNA, they don't have average in their daily routine and their comfort zone is so far out of the box the average man can't comprehend, can't fathom this man that has no fear of failure, injury or paying the ultimate price....  BC lived more life at 27 than most experience in 87 yrs.  Guys like him don't know average, don't know how to be content with 3rd  I truly believe the first time you bring yourself to drive one in wide open right up top on the cushion it rewires your brain. The thrill and adrenaline overcome the fear of being hurt for some men. There ARE men that are already dead if they are forced to be average, forced to be common.  Many live a lot of years but not a lot of life, while others live a lot of life but not a lot of years.   Guys like BC are a different breed that cant be explained to the average man.....  

I don't want to come across insensitive but this: "Such a senseless tragedy; driving a high horsepower to weight ratio, short wheel base "bullet" at a high rate of speed in a circle...just to see who can get there first." is in my opinion, a slap in Bryan's face. Take a look around you, on this forum, on social media....anywhere across our sport. Look how many lives he touched in just a short period of time. He didn't do that because he sat at home on the couch with the lights off, with canned food rations and a fire extinguisher on his lap just to be safe in case something happens. He did it because he chased his dreams. He didn't sit around letting his talent go to waste and his life pass him by because something bad might happen. He went out there and showed the world who Bryan Clauson is and we loved him for it. I didn't know him at all but I'll bet everything I own that he was never happier than when he was in that race car or at the race track sharing a laugh with his friends or watching some kids eyes light up after he signed an autograph for him and made his day. I met him once. Hell of a nice guy and its a damn shame his journey had to come to an end so soon but through that journey, he did more living than most of us could EVER hope to do. He touched countless lives, he made thousands upon thousands of people happy and sent them home with a smile on their face after they got to see him put his super human talents on display. Bryan Clauson had a life to live and dammit, be LIVED it. Unfortunately, it was only for 27 years but he did more than 99.9% of us will ever do. It's not how many years there are in your life, it's the amount of life there is in your years and Bryan did it his way. If you racing isn't your thing anymore, that's your prerogative but to say his death was senseless is just plain wrong. I'll guarantee you he would disagree. He was a hero to so many, even people twice his age and older and was a hell of a good role model for the young ones out there. If he'd never raced, he never would've been any of those things. His racing if nothing else, showed the world what a great and talented young man he is. That is anything but senseless.

That being said i will not forget racing and i will remember BC starting 9th and running right up on the guardrail and driving it to the front doing what he loves and doing what he was put here to do.  May he park it in victory lane on his journey home

Amen!!--and I am going to head to the Nationals and watch the races that he would want everyone to keep on watching!

I understand how you feel & its a personal decision. I've been wondering about that myself after going back to dirt track races the past 7 years after a 40 yr. layoff. Could I keep going if I saw a guy get killed? But since I know its possible, why would I have to witness it in person? Should we support this sport & encourage these guys?

My only thought is they're doing what they love, they would probably be racing in a field somewhere if there weren't organized races. Bryan went down in a blaze of glory doing what he loved....

From a PURELY SELFISH point of view, I was planning on going to all the USAC midget shows in Pennsyltucky, now I'm having second thoughts cause Bryan was the only driver who could challenge the Kevin Kunz fleet. I feel weird about that too...

RIP Bryan Clauson, great driver & human being....

In July of 1979, Roger Larson and Darryl Dawley were both killed in the same accident at Knoxville. When I read that, I said I would no longer follow the sport. That was a foolish thing to say, because I was back following sprint car racing about a year later. For me, personally, racing is like a drug (very hard to give up). I think of that old saying: "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it dozens of times".