With the VERY little that we know, what do you think about that crash in Selmer, TN?

[Stinky The Clown]

The story is here: http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070617/NEWS01/70617003

Right now, we know for sure that there are deaths and injuries - lots of them.

We know the car was an official part of an officially sanctioned parade.

The event itself is years and years old and has raised much money for good causes.

Beyond what I am sure is universal sadness about the deaths and injuries and the wishes for as good an outcome as possible, what do you think about this?

[Double T]

1. Standard safety precautions related to car racing were not taken.

[MindPilot]

2. A terrible, terrible tragedy. The victims are all young mostly teens

which makes it all that much worse. And it illustrates the inherent danger in motor sports not only to the drivers and crew, but also to the spectators. This also points up the inherent failure of local governments to adequately address the needs of motor sports. Cities which have no qualms whatsoever about ponying up hundreds of millions for a ballpark or football stadium, give racing fans the finger.

I'm sure this horrible accident will bring out the DU car-haters in full force.

[flvegan]

3. Putting an honest-to-gawd dragster in a burnout contest

on a town street is just dumb. No bleach box, a flat, painted divider line, too much horsepower and limited protection for the crowd is begging for disaster. Having seen some of the video, I think that this was driver error. If the front wheel "hold" button had malfunctioned, the front tires would be skidding/smoking. If the gas pedal had stuck, he should've shut the engine down. This guy is a pro, not some weekend warrior.

I think that his left tire got on that divider paint, and never got it back. When the back tires are smoking like that, there's no grip, and those skinnies up front aren't much help when you're going fast enough. The driver should've shut down before he got to the end of the guardrails.

Just my opinion.

[blondeatlast]

5. Sounds like you know this stuff, can you explain it for those of us on the outside?

The thing that struck me is the "flat, painted divider line." How did that effect the crash?

The way you describe it it really does sound like driver error with some blame going to inadequate crowd protection. You seem very knowledgeable about this stuff, would you expand some more?

Thanks.

[greenissexy]

6. lines

> The thing that struck me is the "flat, painted divider line." How
> did that effect the crash?

They have an effect on *MANY* crashes every day. Highway departments place those lines on roads to reduce the traction available. My local city added those low traction thick and wide lines near red lights so if you don't come to a complete stop before the line, you'll skid through the crosswalk and maybe the intersection. Just after they installed those hazards, a man was killed when a pick-up couldn't stop because of the low traction. I've seen several cars skid sideways when braking after one wheel hits one of those dangerous lines.

[flvegan]

7. I used to do quite a bit of this myself

Weekend warrior with street-legal cars, mind you. Nothing like what this guy was driving.

The idea of a burnout in drag racing is to heat the tires so that they'll "stick" better. This dragster appears to be running track slicks (no real "tread" but rather a flat rubber surface). They aren't legal for the street, but provide vastly superior traction on a dry surface. In the video, he looks like he gets a little sideways and when he corrects, it looks like he hits the yellow line and at that instant it becomes an over-correction, where he loses control. Bearing in mind that we're talking about horsepower in the thousands (the top cars might have 7000 horsepower, and the car in question probably 2 or 3 thousand, depending upon the class). That much power pushing tires purposely spinning...any blip in the road could cause a crash.

From my own experience from idiotic days past of stoplight drag racing, I can definitively recall that if my tires were spinning at launch, when I hit the stop line with them, I felt the car break loose for that second. As a pro, the one thing he wouldn't have been used to dealing with is a track defect, like a painted yellow line. It's just a thought I had about it, and it may be meaningless considering I'm basing that on a grainy home video and I've never raced a car even remotely close to that class of machine.

I think that if they're going to allow this class of car to run at this event, a guardrail is a foolish form of protection. A 4' tall concrete wall would be a good start. These cars break apart in a crash.

[enlightenment]

4. A horrible tragedy that probably could have been avoided,

but hindsight is always 20/20.

What bothers me almost more than the loss of life was the video footage of spectators ambling past the scene looking at the injured (and presumably dying) with no more interest than they would show an empty cage in a zoo. Watching the young mom pushing the stroller walk past without so much as an expression of concern on her face was frightening. I understand a certain level of shock, but good grief . . .

[tammywammy]

8. I don't understand why they would have this contest or demostration

where people are so close by. I've been to drag races and there's a lot of room between the cars and people, including concrete barriers.

:shrug:

This should have been planned out a little better considering the danger. I'm sadden to know people died.

[magellan]

9. When I saw the video and heard it was a charity event

...I couldn't believe it. Road racing of any sort has a long and notorious history of being dangerous to bystanders and lookers-on, and yet here was a dragster plowing down a street lined with people. Maybe they thought because it was legitimate and the driver a pro that it was safe, but common sense should have told the organizers otherwise. A terrible shame 12 people had to learn the lesson the hard way.