| When Allan Simonsen crashed his Aston Martin in the opening minutes of LeMans and lost his life, it was a brutal reminder of the fact that auto racing has not, despite the vast amount of intelligent effort put into safety and crash survival, lost its power to end a driver's life. The precise mechanism of, and reasons for, Mr. Simonsen's death are not yet known. However, on Sunday night noted racing instructor Peter Krause shared a new article that delves into the risks drivers face and offers reasoned, intelligent explanations as to how these things happen.
Written by Dr. James Norman, Race Car Deaths: The Medical Causes of Racing Deaths with Examples and Resulting Race Car Improvements discusses how drivers are critically injured and how those injuries can be prevented. It's worth reading, even if you aren't particularly concerned with competition, because many of these injury mechanisms also occur on the street. If you want to know how people are killed behind the wheel, this will explain that without hyperbole. Some of my racer friends are extremely upset at the fact that the barrier at Tertre Rouge was pretty close to a tree and that the LeMans course doesn't really measure up to F1 safety standards even though the cars reach F1 velocities. They have a point, but I don't think it will ever be possible to take the risk entirely out of wheel-to-wheel competition. Speaking frankly, I wouldn't want them to… but I'm still above ground, and I still have my choices, don't I? from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com | |||
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