Racetrack Safety

[zach51]

That is a good point. I've also been at tracks where they have halted the program for over an hour because the ambulances had to leave the property to take a highway accident call. It was a bit of a bummer but better than an accident happening and nobody available to rescue.

[heinen81]

Here's what concerns me on this whole deal. I saw the video come up on Facebook, and it was like 6-8 minutes long. I watched about 2-3 minutes of it, thinking WOW, there goes someone's hard work this winter. Saw allot of people standing bye helplessly watching, a few people ran back and forth to a truck for what seemed like nothing in particular... and figured "well, they must just be letting it burn itself out..." The fire never changed in appearance, no white smoke/steam that comes with water... no haze you would expect to see from chemicals.... just a roaring consistent fire. I thought, well that sucks, and clicked off the video. Come to find out the next day, someone was still in that car. Made me sick. Now I wouldn't go out of my way to watch the video at this point, knowing someone was trapped, however nothing while watching that video would have tipped me off that somebody was trapped in that car. Maybe the video doesn't show everything, but it doesn't lie either. For the 3 minutes I saw, it sure didn't look like that fire was changing in any form whatsoever, and I saw allot of people in t-shirts and jeans helplessly standing there, because they couldn't get close to it.

[HomerD]

It should be a concern to all racers that the track have fire personnel. Racers should demand it.

[Aluminium Block]

For the 3 minutes I saw, it sure didn't look like that fire was changing in any form whatsoever, and I saw allot of people in t-shirts and jeans helplessly standing there, because they couldn't get close to it.

This track has a volunteer fire department with a real fire truck, and a real ambulance on site. They did what most tracks that are considered to be "safe" are doing. There are tracks that function without a fire truck on site, and without a real ambulance. Someone commented on facebook that the pump on the fire truck misfunctioned, and it took about 3.5 minutes to get anything to come out of it. If this was the case, this could have happened anywhere. Even if a fire truck is tested before the race begins, it doesn't mean it can't misfunction five minutes later. This is a horrifying event equal to what happened to Jim Dunn. The Jim Dunn accident caused major changes in the design of dirt late models. The next year, the NDRA small body late model came out, and there were new requirements for fuel cell constructions and installation. Will anything come out of this? I agree, the roll cages need to be higher to give more clearance to exit the car. A person has to be a contortionist to get in and out of these cars now with just 12" of clearance at the roll cage. Are HANS devices causing any issue in exiting?

[Crudbrother]

The "I heard" comments are running wild here in the Portsmouth area. One of which is that the drivers' Hans device somehow prevented him from escaping the car, that his belts had been undone. I witnessed this accident, and hope to never see anything like it again. It was just a feeling of helplessness. I do agree that the side opening on the cars is very small. You can see drivers struggling to get out of them even at the trophy presentations. The newer Swartz cars appear to be a bit "taller" than the other makes. Craig

[Josh Bayko]

The "I heard" comments are running wild here in the Portsmouth area. One of which is that the drivers' Hans device somehow prevented him from escaping the car, that his belts had been undone. I witnessed this accident, and hope to never see anything like it again. It was just a feeling of helplessness. I do agree that the side opening on the cars is very small. You can see drivers struggling to get out of them even at the trophy presentations. The newer Swartz cars appear to be a bit "taller" than the other makes. Craig

Longhorns and XR1 Rockets seem to be a little taller as well.

[grt74]

we have been to topless races and it always bothered me that some of the drivers helmets were sticking up above the halo (REALLY NICE TECH GUYS)this has been going on for years,absolutely no excuse,iin my opinion if you don't have 2inches above your helmet its to close,i used to use a piece of 1 inch square tubing to put between the helmet and the halo and if it was tight we lowered the seat,if you do that i think you'll find that 90% of the cars out there are too short,with todays containment seats and the hans, ect,there needs to be provisions made in that area of the car,90% of the cars today,if you've got your helmet,hans on,try to get out,i think you'll find it pretty hard to get out,I'm actually working on fixing this on one of my cars but now I'm going to fix all of them,GOD SPEED TO THE FAMILY,while we are not going to fix everything in racing this is a very easy one to fix,REMEMBER IF ITS HARD TO GET IN NOW,THINK ABOUT WHEN YOUR UPSIDE DOWN AND THE CAGE HAS BEEN BENT IN A INCH OR TWO,good luck to all and be safe as possible

[Illtsate32]

I'd like to see the volunteer crew do a drill or practice a fire drill once a week...

[pfd60]

I have never posted on this section of 4m, but I want to say a few things. I am a career firefighter and late model racer. I think about fire safety all the time at the race track. Especially after we watched a guy burn alive at a small track in central Illinois 6 or so years ago. I felt so useless we could not do anything to help without the proper equipment to put it out. The track crew was not prepared for a fire at all. They had one extinguisher that worked. The track closed after and everyone there will never forget what they seen. Just like the tragedy from last week. And someone lost their life. It is a terrible thing to read about. I'll admit I was reactive and would not race at a track that did not have an on scene fire crew. I was racing mini sprints at the time. When I moved to late models I didn't check as much about fire crews because I have two fire extinguishers on the car. But, that is not enough. If you have a serious gas leak you have to have a trained fire crew to put it out. I will be leaving from the tracks I go to if they do not have an on scene fire crew with guys geared up ready to go. The other people posting are right if the racers would quit racing until the proper fire equipment was brought to the races it would force the tracks to do it. We all need to think about fire safety at the track and in the home also. 7 people a day die in house fires in the USA. Please check your smoke detectors.

[RW57]

It was a lot of work to raise cage I also added a bar to upper RF corner of hoop.it kind of blocks RS exit a little bit but cage will not collapse on RF corner in reference to a Swartz that is what we kind of copied we I also added a double hoop.bar beside drivers head looks like a funny car or top fuel from.side I would have raised it higher but my son did not want to.to any higher.

[71PRPFan]

What happened was a slow rollover and immediate engulfment. That's really it. I don't know if he was conscious or not after impact and whether that played a role or not. Fuel cell was up hill. Honestly there's so many variables in this whole event where the outcome would have never made it off of tick ridge road. One thing here or there and it would be different