Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Guard rails are not the answer.   In fact, the reason that so many tracks installed concrete walls because of all of the problems with guard rails.  The first problem is that they do not do a good job of stopping cars.   They bend, they break, cars get through the guard rail.   To solve the problem of the guard rails bending and breaking, people started to make the down post out of stronger material.   What makes a great down post......an old railroad tie.   Take all of the potential issues with a concrete wall and now concentrate it to a 6-inch by 6-inch post.   Now, instead of worrying about the top halo contacting the wall, you are worrying about any part of the car contacting the post.   Now instead of a blunt object you have an object that can impale the driver from any angle that the car lands on the post. 

If you think watching a track crew repair a catch fence is a slow process, you should watch them repair the guard rail.   It is a much slower process.   Also, concrete walls are relatively smooth.   A repaired guard rail is not.   

I still believe a concrete wall with a retaining fence is the best solution.   If you have a catch fence, the drivers stay in the track and do not go hitting other objects or hitting the top of the wall.  I do agree that a plain concrete wall with no catch fence is a problem.   We have had enough evidence of that to know this is true.   However, we also have a lot of expereince with a good catch fencing keeping the car in the park, and off of the retaining wall. 

As I posted on another thread......what happened can be attributed to the "perfect storm". The sequence of events in Jason's crash tragically lined up in such a way that he lost his life. Maybe upon inspection of the car, and a medical report reviewing the extent of the injuries there will be some light shed on exactly what that sequence was. At this point we can only speculate, but it does appear that the exposed short wall was the culprit in the crash. Everytime I see a wall like that at a race track I wonder why those in charge don't see the liklihood of disaster staring back at them. Probably because with the safety of the cars, they've become somewhat complacent with the safety of the track. It's odd how fans can walk into a joint and see the obvious shortfalls and the owners don't seem to. Just because a certain sequence of events is rare, that doesn'r mean it should be overlooked. I've always thogh one of the most obvious reasons for a wall was containment. Keep the cars inside the race track! Prevent them from wildly disappearing in to the night outside of the track. At least with a high wall, if a car gets over, the momentum is pretty well used up. My son and I went to our first WoO race at Devils Bowl for the spring opener of 1996 or 1997. We no more than sat down and we each stared at one another and made a comment about what we saw in turns three and four.....the suppoert class was pitted in a neat line stretching from turn three to turn four about 75 feet or so out from the track.....and no fricking fence of any kind between them and the track!  We both remarked about how stupidly unsafe that was. During time trials, a sprint car got out of control, jumped the cushion in three and flipped wildly right through the crowded pits of the supprort class. A driver who was working on his car was killed instantly and there were at least two other serious injuries. By the follwing year there was a catch fence from turn three through turn four at Devils Bowl. How the hell did anybody miss that previously? We saw it first visit ever! 

Until drivers, sanctions, and fans refuse to race at tracks with issues that pose a risk of health, life, and safety there will never be any changes done to fix it.

How many of you fans and drivers have ever went to a track and asked for their insurance carriers information and what coverage they have if any at all?

How many of you fans and drivers went to a track that doesn't have adequate ems/rescue staff and equipment if any at all?

You'd be surprised at how many lack the above.....

Since Knoxville made the guardrails the current height I have never seen a car go through them. The fact that they bend, is a good thing. That is energy being absorbed by something other than the driver. In the last 15 years i cant really think of any times the races were delayed to repair a piece of the guardrail. I'm not saying it hasn't happened. (at knoxville)

If you think about a car landing halo first on top of a fence, i'd rather take the risk of it landing on top of a railroad tie that is spaced out every 10 ft compared to concrete that is constant around the track.

My opinion won't change that guardrail + catch fence is the best option. However, we have to keep in mind that a majority of dirt tracks run full bodied fender cars weekly instead of sprint cars. Whatever type of car makes a track the most money, that is who the track will suit best.

so my girlfriend asked me that question when i informed her of the tragic event and it is  a very valid point!  she is six years new to sprint car racing and loves it just much as we all do.  soooo, is there an answer?

thoughts, feelings, remarks???

I guess we will disagree.   I just remember back in the day when the local short track I was at had over a 45 minute delay as they tried to figure out how to get the railroad tie unstuck betwen the frame rail and the rear end of the sprint car that had landed on top of the railroad tie.   At first everyone was amazed on how far the railraod tie was lodged into the car, and how they could not get it to budge.   When someone noticed that the railroad tie was only one inch form the bottom of the seat, the conversation turned much more somber.  

I also think you should reconsider your comment about landing on the railing with the halo.   Having a fixed object enter the drivers comparment is the absolutely worst case scenario.    

As another poster said, these cars are as minimalistic and raw of a machine that you can possibly have. It does take a special breed of person to run these things.  Which is why we as fans are drawn to both the machines and the drivers that drive them.  All know as a fan when we go to the races to cheer on our favorite driver that we might watch them die that night. Same goes for folks that race, you might not make it home. Safety has improved to the point where we don’t lose a number drivers a summer like we did 40 years ago. Unfortunately we seem to have forgotten that death is always in attendance at the racetrack, thankfully most nights anymore he’s just a spectator vs being a participant.  This has obviously woken everyone with a start.  This shouldn’t happen but with 900 hp in a 1400 lbs race car doing 140 mph at the end of the front stretch of some 1/2 mile tracks racing these cars is literally a dance with death and things can and do happen sometimes.  

What should be done to keep this from happening again?  I don’t know.  There are so many things that immediately come to mind IE catchfences, walls, tubing, motors, tires, and so on. These two things I do know for certain. You can’t make it 100% safe and no two wrecks are 100% alike. It’s racing, and things happen, everybody is racing at the absolute edge of control and one slip and that’s it. You never want something to happen and you always look at ways to improve safety.  You also have to be calculated about how you go about trying to improve something.  Racing for the majority of racers and teams is a recreational thing and very few actually make any real money doing it.  If you force them to do something like scrap all their chassis because they have been outlawed then many of them will fold being they can’t afford it.  Same goes for the tracks too. Force then all to raise their catch fences to 15’ then there are a number that might fold and sell the property to a housing developer.  Not to also mention your attempt to make something better might have made it better for 5% of the crashes but actually made 95% of the crashes more dangerous.  Not sure what the fix will be but I’m sure if there is one out there they will do it if possible  

Not trying to justify what happened because my heart breaks for the family.  Definately for Bobbi but more so for Jaxx. While the extent of my knowing Jason Johnson was saying hello in the pits or at the merchandise trailer, it was apparent he loved his family. And that little boy just lost his hero.  As a former service member and having gone to enough funerals in my day than I care to recount the one thing that always balls me up inside is seeing a small child lose a parent. 

Any track that brefuses to install proper safety features doesn't deserve to run....simple 

The cars are probably as safe as they're going to get now that everyone is running wrap around seats.   The place where safety can be improved is the racetracks.    In this case, people will wonder if a catch fence would have prevented this.   In my opinion it would have.    Last year Joey Saldana flipped over the fence into a spectator area at Volusia.   Noone was hurt, but did they do anything to prevent it from happening again?  Then three days later Dale Blaney did almost the same thing and three people were hurt, a couple of them badly.   To this day, has anything been done to that facility to prevent another accident?    I could say similar things about Devils Bowl.    Jeff Swindell flipped over the front straightaway fence a long time ago.   Noone was hurt, but they did nothing and that fence is exactly the same as it was in 1989 (or whenever that happened).    When I take someone out there who's new to racing I advise them to not be walking down there by the fence while sprint cars were on the track.   

How can things like this be changed?   I don't know.   Sometimes it takes a disaster to get anyone's attention.   And in some cases maybe it takes tracks getting sued.   Obviously I don't want to see another disaster or see racing issues wind up in court.   Maybe if the tracks won't do anything to improve safety, then maybe the sanction bodies should.   For that matter maybe track owners and sanction bodies should get together on this to see what can be done.    

Good thoughts on this. 

I believe that Volusia spent some $$$ this past offseason (after the Saldana and Blaney crashes) and put in new (much taller and sturdier) fencing in turns 1 & 2.  Their insurance company maybe required it!?  

One other example of a facility changing that I can think of is 34 Raceway in Burlington, IA.  Brad Sweet hit the blunt end of their pretty terrible turn 3 wall a few years back and sheared the car in half.  He was very, VERY lucky to only get out of that with a broken ankle (or whatever somewhat minor injury he had).  That off-season, the track completely re-did the turn 3 wall and made it much, much safer.  

The thing that really sucks about the Beaver Dam deal is that a local driver (Scott Semmelmann) passed away 4 years ago from a crash there during hotlaps of an IRA show.  The circumstances of that crash sound WAY too similar to Jason's.  I believe that was the first fatality in the history of that track.  The track and insurance company maybe chalked it up to bad luck, and didn't change anything.  I would have to think that their hand has been forced now.  Let's hope so.

#1.  

Guard rails are not the answer.   In fact, the reason that so many tracks installed concrete walls because of all of the problems with guard rails.  The first problem is that they do not do a good job of stopping cars.   They bend, they break, cars get through the guard rail.   To solve the problem of the guard rails bending and breaking, people started to make the down post out of stronger material.   What makes a great down post......an old railroad tie.   Take all of the potential issues with a concrete wall and now concentrate it to a 6-inch by 6-inch post.   Now, instead of worrying about the top halo contacting the wall, you are worrying about any part of the car contacting the post.   Now instead of a blunt object you have an object that can impale the driver from any angle that the car lands on the post. 

If you think watching a track crew repair a catch fence is a slow process, you should watch them repair the guard rail.   It is a much slower process.   Also, concrete walls are relatively smooth.   A repaired guard rail is not.   

I still believe a concrete wall with a retaining fence is the best solution.   If you have a catch fence, the drivers stay in the track and do not go hitting other objects or hitting the top of the wall.  I do agree that a plain concrete wall with no catch fence is a problem.   We have had enough evidence of that to know this is true.   However, we also have a lot of expereince with a good catch fencing keeping the car in the park, and off of the retaining wall. 

There is room for cages to get taller, a lot taller. I have bitched about rule changes adding cost but if taller cages became a rule I would gladly make the change knowing I have $20,000 worth of obsolete frames sitting in the garage. Could existing frames be modified? Possibly. To say the cars are as safe as they are going to get is pretty piss poor in my opinion, just my $0.02

THIS....is what Beaver Dam SHOULDA done after the first fatality happened...there is DEF a design flaw at beaver dam and it cost us TWO drivers.......UNACCEPTABLE!!!.....Tulare Thunderbowl updated there safety fencing back in 2012...i DEF think the WoO and other sactioning bodies need to seriously look at tracks that are NOT up to date with regards to catchfencing.