[gta3kuruma]

Just found out that British Indy car driver Dan Wheldon died after a horrific accident involving 15 cars at the las vegas indy 300. Nobody should die in motor racing accidents anymore and it is extremely rare but I guess there wasn't much that cold be done to prevent this.

RIP.

[JOSEPH X]

Pretty f'ed up crash by the looks of it







Rest in peace.

This post has been edited by JOSEPH X on Monday, Oct 17 2011, 00:29

[fgcarva1]

Quite an unfortunate event. Hopefully safety reforms will occur.

R.I.P.

Full video--

[DOOM!]

I switched over from my football game that was on to watch this. Very, very unfortunate. From what I heard from the announcers this race wasn't even towards the championship, it was for 5 million dollars. Must've been a hard 5 pace laps in memory of him after they found out, hopefully they can try to make these Indy cars more safe, which is already hard. These guys and gals have a lot of guts going out there and driving in these. He died from "unsurvivable injuries", must been nasty.

Was Danica Patricks last race. A real sh*tty one.

[Dallasa]

Saw the crash live and the first thought in my head was "Someone's dead." It was a bad, bad feeling and I feel horrible that it ended up coming true.

[Maverick.]

QUOTE (DOOM! @ Monday, Oct 17 2011, 12:01)

I switched over from my football game that was on to watch this. Very, very unfortunate. From what I heard from the announcers this race wasn't even towards the championship, it was for 5 million dollars. Must've been a hard 5 pace laps in memory of him after they found out, hopefully they can try to make these Indy cars more safe, which is already hard. These guys and gals have a lot of guts going out there and driving in these. He died from "unsurvivable injuries", must been nasty. Was Danica Patricks last race. A real sh*tty one.

The 5 million dollar bonus was for driver's that don't normally have a starting drive. So if a rookie or a driver that doesn't normally race in the series win the race, they recieve a 5 million dollar bonus.

The race still went towards the championship, however as the crash happened on the 14th lap (I think it was 14), that race was abandoned. Which mean that whoever was winning the championship (Dario Franchetti) was guaranteed a win.

[Miamivicecity]

He was scheduled to drive with James Courtney in the Holden Racing Team Commodore for the V8 Supercars in the Gold Coast 600 this weekend. Will Power was aswell.

Will be a sombre occasion. I'm going up for the first time for the event and was looking forward to seeing all the Indy Car drivers. Something wont feel right with Dan's passing.

[Jay]

It's such a trope these days to show in agonising slow motion how people injure themselves or die in sports accidents. I don't think it was necessary to show on the news (at least the coverage I saw) of Wheldon's car camera all the way up to just before the impact that sent him airborne. There is something unnervingly eerie about seeing a young mans last moments on camera.

The most vexing thing was how this race went ahead under protest over how large the field was on such a small course (again, that's what I have read, I have little first-hand knowledge of Indy after they stopped coming to Surfers Paradise)

[Vercetti27]

thanks for posting videos, very tasteful .

RIP.

[Maverick.]

QUOTE (Vercetti27 @ Monday, Oct 17 2011, 21:12)

thanks for posting videos, very tasteful . RIP.

Thanks for being a twat.

You don't have to watch the videos if you don't want.

Obviously the TV stations who show them on the 6 o'clock news are a little different. That I don't agree with. The on-board footage anyway.

[Mark]

RIP Dan. What a horrific way to go...at least it was doing something he loved.

A huge huge shame, looked like he had a contract with Andretti Green tied up for next year and was only eligible for the $5million prize due to not being a regular runner this year. If he was a regular he probably wouldn't have been where he was on the track. Helped develop the new safer 2012 Dallara chassis too, crazy that he got killed in the last race with the old car, a car that compared to today's standards was known to be pretty unsafe and thus one of the reasons it was due to be replaced.

Horrible seeing people like TK and Dario breaking down after it all too. He really was a well loved guy in the sport.

Hopefully this will have the same impact on Indycar as Senna's death at Imola in 94 had with F1 and they strive towards safety over anything else. After all, Las Vegas was one of the tracks fitted with SAFER barriers throughout, it's about as safe as ovals get..

[Maverick.]

QUOTE (Mark @ Tuesday, Oct 18 2011, 22:53)

Hopefully this will have the same impact on Indycar as Senna's death at Imola in 94 had with F1 and they strive towards safety over anything else. After all, Las Vegas was one of the tracks fitted with SAFER barriers throughout, it's about as safe as ovals get..

They still shouldn't have been racing there.

A lot of team managers, and the drivers themselves, voiced concern over the size of the oval not being suitable to host such a large event.

Oh well, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Every time these guys suited up, they knew the risks. A positive of this is he died doing what he loves.

RIP.

[Redketman]

That was one of the most horrific crashes I have ever seen. Race car drivers rarely dies anymore but there is no question about it that motorsports can be very dangerous at times. R.I.P Dan Wheldon.

[CheesyJ]

People are at fault for this. By the sounds of it, the track should not have been raced on. It was one that could frustrate drivers, as they could often be stuck in the one position on the track. The lack of movement can cause frustration, which would lead to drivers making errors.

This sport needs to make changes. F1 has changed and has become a lot safer, but there are still deaths occuring in this sport, often every half decade or so. The sooner they sit down and work out changes the better. By doing that, they will be saving lives.

RIP Dan Wheldon.

[sivispacem]

QUOTE (gta3kuruma @ Sunday, Oct 16 2011, 23:57)

Nobody should die in motor racing accidents anymore

Sorry, what the f*ck? By it's very nature, motorsport is dangerous. You cannot regulate or design out the inherent risks of hammering it around a circuit, competing with numerous other vehicles at high speed.

I agree with what others have said- too many vehicles on the circuit competing at the same time. A longer circuit would result in less bunching, but is hard to achieve with a basic oval track. Reduced driver numbers means reduced revenue. There's not really a lot else you can do to be honest. The accident wasn't' caused by some kind of mechanical failure that can be designed out, or by an inherent problem with the circuit- as Mark said, it's about as safe as you can get on an oval.

To some extent, whilst I sympathise with the view that more needs to be done to to ensure driver safety, in the grand scheme of motorsport Indycar isn't that dangerous. There have been 3 Indycar fatal crashes (driver, staff and spectator) since 2000. In the same period of time, there have been 15 fatal accidents in the Paris Dakar Rally, 10 in British National or British Club-class racing, 9 in NASCAR, 8 in the National Pro Drag Racing series, 4 in various US Sprint Racing championships, 3 in WRC, 3 in SCCA rally classes, and even 2 in Formula 1. To me, that doesn't suggest that Indycar is any more inherently dangerous than other forms of motorsport, including ones often regarded to have made huge progress in terms of safety. And of course, all the four-wheel fatality rates- whether open wheel or closed wheel; straight track, circuit or off-road; pale in comparison to the fatality rates amongst motorcycle racing competitors.

At the end of the day, competitors- and spectators- know the potential risks. They're clearly highlighted in contracts and in 8-foot-high signs on the circuit perimeters. The best we can do is mitigate risk.

This post has been edited by sivispacem on Thursday, Oct 20 2011, 11:39

[gta3kuruma]

I completely understand that motorsport is naturally dangerous and is the reason that some people participate in it but lets not forget that it is still a sport, as well as a job and and entertainment, nobody wants to see people dying in it, it doesn't help anything. What I was saying is that the governing bodies of motorsports should be always looking to imporve the safety for the drivers and fans, it doesn't have to make the sport less interesting or artificial. This was a freak accident however where no matter who was in that car they coldn't have done anything to stop what was going on at the time, the car was airbourne and it shouldn't have been.

[sivispacem]

QUOTE (gta3kuruma @ Thursday, Oct 20 2011, 12:52)

What I was saying is that the governing bodies of motorsports should be always looking to imporve the safety for the drivers and fans

The problem is, there's not really that much left they can feasibly implement to improve safety standards. I mean, single-seat racers already have about the highest torsional stiffness rating of literally anything man-made; the same is true of Le Mans Prototypes for that matter. We've got automatic fire extinguishers (though they're less common in single-seat classes), self-sealing fuel tanks, electronic driver aids, HANS devices, 6-point harnesses, advanced roll-cages, composite brakes, inboard push-rod remote-canister suspension systems, active aerodynamics...

At the end of the day, 95% of accidents that occur in motorsport are down to driver error. 4% of them are down to technical failure, and the rest a combination of other factors including those that can be mitigated out by safety measures. True, not all motorsport classes are adopting the latest and greatest safety innovations- there are time constraints, cost constraints for competitors and track staff and a myriad of other factors that influence it. But in this case, I just don't see a way of mitigating the risks associated with this very particular style of racing that doesn't either alienate the fan-base or fundamentally change the doctrine of the sport- or most likely both. The thing is, for all the talk of track overcrowding and other contributing factors, the primary cause of the accident is still driver error. You can never mitigate driver error in motorsport and it will always remain the most significant cause of accidents.

Motorsport is dangerous, but so is life. As a competitor, staff member or spectator, you're proportionally far more likely to die at a football match due a variety of factors than you are at a motorsport event (of course, the proportions of spectators dying at events compared to competitors is much higher in football...). The problem is, many outside commentators who don't participate, understand or even hold a vague interest in motorsport are trying to make judgements about what could be done to "stop this kind of thing happening again". That's just not possible. You can't stop accidents from happening. The best you can do is design the vehicles in such a way that the likelihood of the competitor walking out unhurt- or at the very least avoiding serious injury- is as high as possible. And these modern risk-mitigation measures come with their own problems. Most roll-cages, designed to protect from the most common forms of impact (front, side and oblique) don't protect well from top-angle impacts, such as another vehicle hitting a car that's rolled, or is in the process of rolling or tumbling. Roll-cages, at the end of the day, are basically just welded steel or aluminium tubing, and there have been a couple of instances of people being killed by top/side impacts due to bars in FIA-approved roll-cages being severed by certain kinds of impact and impaling the competitor. People have been killed (suffocated) by the Carbon Dioxide fire extinguishers displacing air in the cabin when they're activated. Six-point harnesses can cause serious groin and pelvic injuries in high speed impacts. HANS devices, designed to prevent Basiliar skull fractures, have tended to move the site of fracture further down the spine, to between the shoulder blades instead.

There are so many factors for organisers, vehicle designers and competitors to consider, and so many "what if's"- even about the newest safety systems- that's it's very hard to see where we can go from here.

[gta3kuruma]

What you have said is true and I agree there is not much more that can really be done to improve the safety of the sport and in this case the main factor that should be addressed is the fact that the track was not suitable for a race such as this with the amount of cars involved. although when I read the post by Mark Webberon the bbc f1 website I noticed he Weldon was in fact driving a "test car" of sorts to prevent cars going over the wheels and causing them to go airbourne so it shows there were things being done to try and improve the safety of these cars.