LeMons Crash Proves Why Safety Should Never Be Cheap

Aaron Cole
by Aaron Cole

In my life, I’ve officiated exactly two LeMons races thanks to the good graces of Murilee Martin. At those races, I’ve watched tech inspectors go over seats, belts and harnesses with more scrutiny than border guards in Israel. To be sure, it’s astounding to me how much safety needs to be welded, worked and crammed into a “junker” from the outside — most people never see that. But even I wondered sometimes why tech was so hard to pass.

There are myriad things that can go wrong on a racetrack. However, there are only a few things that can save lives when those things go wrong. For those lifesaving devices, there’s no substitute or corner-cutting, and there are reasons why good teams spend more on a cage and brakes than they ever spend on an engine.

Case in point: Coming up on a blind crest and running face-first into the rear of a stalled car and everyone is OK after.

The above video comes from the Ferkel the Nein-11 — which was featured in this unbelievable video from “The Atlantic” magazine.

According to other drivers, the Miata was limping around the track when the Porsche hit it. It’s unfair to blame spotters and corner workers for something like this because it clearly happened so fast that reaction times don’t matter.

The only thing that mattered at the point of impact was the worthiness of the safety gear.

In this instance, it appeared everything went to plan. All the drivers were OK and the Nein-11 even made it out to race later that weekend, winning a well-deserved Heroic Fix award for that race and possibly the year.

Before

Today’s PSA: Safety doesn’t have a price.

After

[Photo credit: Caryn Kealey]

Aaron Cole
Aaron Cole

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  • VolandoBajo VolandoBajo on Dec 08, 2015

    Points all well taken, Jack. And I certainly don't have the experience you have with situations like this. But I do have experience with reliability engineering, failure analysis, root cause analysis, etc., and a couple of other things seem to come to mind. Given the behavior of the flagger, if that is the best they can muster, besides getting them off the "grassy knoll", why doesn't the flagger know better what to do? Inadequate training? Inadequate testing and certification of flaggers? Was there a training program at all for flaggers? If so, how was it validated, or was it, given that we can see an outcome like the one on the video. Ditto for driver training, and testing of absorption of that training. Were drivers adequately trained to get the hell out of Dodge when they were limping? Do they even know what constitutes Dodge in that situation? If they received training, was there any testing of drivers pre- and post-training, to see if training was properly absorbed? It is not enough that the right information be in the training materials. It must be confirmed that such information has successfully been imparted, and that it is retained with time. Yes, these are not things that can be done overnight. But they are not things that need to cost a lot of money. More than money, it takes foresight, vision, a few dedicated developers of adequate driver and flagger training, plus some design and administration of feedback results from such training. Intensive perhaps in terms of manpower consumed, but it is also a distributed workload, not falling entirely on a single group, necessarily. And as much as this is true for the development of training materials, it is even more so for the administration of training, post-training testing, and evaluation and remediation of drivers and flaggers. And I am not that familiar with either the fine points of racing technique, or that particular course. But couldn't a lot of the forward cars' motion be interpreted as just setting up for subsequent maneuvers, rather than clearly evasive action? And while the reaction time might seem long, remember it encompasses both a sudden awareness calling for a situational analysis, followed by a stomp on the brakes, and perhaps not enough time to consider if he can avoid being hit if he swerves right. Or if he will end up going end over end or rolling sideways if he pulls left suddenly. And even if he gets on the brakes in well under the time interval, you have forgetten to include computation of the time and distance required to stop after the brakes are hit, given the speed differential. It seems as if he might have solidly applied the brakes within the interval of visibility, but that doesn't mean that the vehicle will immediately come to rest. Perhaps you can give a more granular analysis of the times and distances involved, though I don't fault your initial reaction and focus, given what you have been through, and especially the famous "clay pigeon" video of you desperately trying to get clear of oncoming traffic while virtually trapped in your vehicle, just a few months back. And that compounded by the still fresh memory of another drubbing you are still recovering from. But I would like to know your thoughts about such things as training and testing of the participants, the realistic options available within the available time interval, and whether or not a person with even the fastest reactions would have been able to pull the 911 to a stop before the point of impact, given the setup shown. I have mixed feelings about such amateur circuits and races...on the one hand, they give people a chance to get real experience, on the other hand, they seem to need a bit more of a safety first, training and testing before racing philosophy implemented, to prevent these events from turning into motorized Russian roulette. And until the whole show gets tightened up, I do not think I will be encouraging my son to consider trying to get behind the wheel in these events even if he gets a chance. A flat out drag race, sure. Drifting comps? Maybe. But a cross between high speed bumper cars and an old-fashioned Friday night demolition derby? I don't THINK so...

  • Erikstrawn Erikstrawn on Dec 08, 2015

    Here's video with an in-car view that shows the driver trying to swerve, but the wheels are already locked up. You also get to see the Miata's video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R36aI6r8F2Y

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