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The tire landed almost twenty rows up in the stands. There is no way that racetracks are going to get rid of the first twenty rows of seating. To do that would cut attendance by about 25-30%.

The catch fencing has been improved year after year. Its not until its tested where you realize its weaknesses. In this crash it kept the car on the track which is the job. Its to catch the vehicle.

If you think NASCAR has taken safety for granted then you really need to check out the steps they have taken in the last five years. Its perhaps the most progressive safety involved motor sports series in the last 10 years. Two new generation of cars, the SAFER barrier was an ingenious invention that even F1 hasnt taken to improve its tracks, a slew of preseason medical tests and they were the first sport to do baseline concussion tests.

The company that makes the SAFER barrier already has a prototype pexiglass like product that is supposedly designed to DEFLECT the car back on the track instead of catching it. It would interesting to see how that would work with the forces involved in a car wreck like yesterday.

No, that was just one of the possible things. There are lot of things to consider. Where the chance of debris going over fence, it is usually highest at the turns at the oval just like it happened yesterday as well. Crash happened on straight but the uncontrollable cars smashed into wall at the turn and debris went everywhere.
They can have catch fence higher there, and empty some rows at two turns that follow the straights or have better more robust stronger fence there than other places on track.. Those are hot zones on every oval. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that. Everyone knows that, but rarely anything different is done there. They can surely improve fencing in those localised areas.
The safety things needs to get to the track, and as fast as possible. Safety of drivers is one thing, safety of spectators is equally if not more important. I am not saying they should have done anything better, but they should do something now. Immediate reaction is always better than no reaction. To say that sport is safer now is no excuse or justification for anything like this. They shouldn't be hounded, but they definitely need to be held responsible for what happened and made to improve on current system.

It's the extreme way that the car hit an upright in the fence that smashed the car up. The fencing did the job but could have another inner layer to it, so close to another '55 disaster.

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As far as safety personnel getting to the stands, it took them right at 1 minute to respond to the stands. That is an outstanding response time.

There is no seating on almost every single NASCAR circuit on the turns. In fact, I cant even think of one. Unless you call the dogleg in the triovals a turn.

The fencing is 22ft high in the section they hit yesterday. In the past 4 years the fencing has changed significantly at Daytona and Talledega. The distance between the posts have been cut in half. The number of parallel catch wires has double. The height has grown.

Just to put it into perspective. Kyle Larsons car was almost 15 ft in the air when it contacted the fence with its front end. The fence goes almost 27ft above the racing surface at the area where he hit it. The concrete retaining wall with the SAFER barrier is 4 ft tall.

Held responsible? Like I said, NASCAR is one of the most safety focused racing organization out there. HANS device? Yup, NASCAR first to mandate it. Now, a version is used in every single racing league in the WORLD. The sport has not only made it much safer for the drivers, hell Larson got out of the car as soon as it stopped, and has made it safer for the fans over the years as well. It will look at this incident and determine what needs to change just like it did in 2009 when Carl Edwards debris ended up in the stands.

I think we will see an inner layer come about. Having a solid fence there will detract from being able to hear the cars roar past which, IMHO, is the only reason to sit so low as you cant see anything when they go by at 200 MPH.

Those numbers dont mean $#!t to those people who got hit. In real world they failed to stop debris from going into stands. Like I said, they need not be hounded, but they need better system. All those numbers failed to prevent debris from hugely heavy cars going at such high speeds from injuring spectators. And yes, the track owners will have to fork out compensation to all injured people because it is their responsibility to ensure spectator safety. So yes, they will be held responsible. And that is how progress is made. You must react to improve things after things like this. Better than what they are now. There is no other way to look at it. Safety implemented wasnt good enough at the end of the day.

If they want to continue the spectacle as it is, where the NASCAR's philosophy is "Have at it, boys", they need to improve spectator safety more.

The catch fence is designed for CARS not debris. There is NO WAY to stop debris completely and you will never ever see that happen until racing is outlawed or nobody is allowed to sit in the stands.


Did the catch fence keep the cars on the track? Yes or no.


Also, how does the have at it boys have anything to do with the wreck? It was one driver trying to block the other in a legal fashion (that would of even been legal in F1). If anything, blame the speeds at which the cars travel but then you will open another can of worms about slowing down racecars.

Its not the fence - its the cars, and the way the races play out. Those cars dont break up like a composite monocoque and body car does, and the technology to keep the wheels tethered better just isn't there yet. The inevitability of a last lap crash is a consequence of the way the rules for car design and modification come together with the mentality of the drivers. The rules create pack racing, and the drivers know they have to take their shot right there at the end. Multiple drivers in that accident admitted they saw smoke and yellows and kept their foot down, and not just in a "I'd spin around if I smashed the brake" kind of way.

What's worse is the finish line is right in the middle of the tri oval which is the most difficult part of the track to drive and thus more dangerous. So you have guys making their last ditch effort in the most scary part of the circuit with the fans as close as possible to see the photo finish. Recipe for wrecks.

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Thats the way i saw it as well, i'm just wondering will the driver responsible for the carnage and unfortunate consequences be disciplined for his actions?

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PFI Pick 10 Competition

Current Standing: 14th Position

No, he won't be. That's pretty standard. He even admitted he'd make an additional move if he had the chance.


The fire was probably just the fuel coming out of what was left of the lines on Kyle's car, having been disconnected from the motor and some of its ancillaries. It was on the track and only lasted a second, though Kyle did say some flames came through the firewall briefly before the car came to a stop and he hopped out.

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I guess that explains many of the wrecks we see then, if the drivers are happy to take those kinds of risks then fair enough, i'm not sure how many of the spectators would like to do that though?

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PFI Pick 10 Competition

Current Standing: 14th Position

I don't what it's like at NASCAR events, but for F1 all tickets remind spectators that motor sport is dangerous and it is at you're own risk that you attend - the racing series and track owners will not be held responsible for any injury caused. If you don't agree with this,you don't attend. I'm guessing the same will apply for the spectators here.

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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals that Chuck Norris allows to live.

Ive been to every major circuit here in the States and you don't get through the gate without signing a waiver. I haven't been to many as a spectator, but the ones I have, when you buy the tickets you do the same. Can the track still be in hot water? yes, but only if it can be proved they were negligent in some way. Daytona has the current industry standard everything - its one of the most elite motorsport facilities in the world, if not #1, and I don't mean in prestige. And their reaction and response to the incident by all accounts was exceptional, so I don't see any opportunity for mega lawsuits or anything like that.

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Never signed a waiver for seating in grandstand or bleachers or anything outside the race track. Only when I've gotten out passes. I don't think I signed anything even for the grand am race at Laguna seca 3 years ago and those you can walk all around the garage.

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ashley is referring to competing when signing a waiver.

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No I mean to get INTO any facility you sign a waiver at the gate, no matter what you are there for, and when you buy a ticket, you are agreeing to the same terms and conditions. It will either say so on the ticket, or be posted wherever you buy it.

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I don't know that I have seen it but that sounds about right. I just haven't literally signed anything at a gate except for a pitpass at a sprint car race.

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Just to aggressive from Nascar drivers again, terrible racing in Nascar in terms of fair clean driving, luckily no one got killed this time, thankfully.

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Driver Instructor & Test Driver

Yes, that declaimer is on almost anything these days but it does not free the organisers from legal obligation of adequate protection and safety of spectators. All it does is cover their obligation of informing spectators of possible dangers. If they are not informed, and if something happens it will be even more ugly for them with multifold increase in possible compensation.
No organiser of any big sanctioned public event can ever dust themselves of safety of spectators with the declaimer. Not in half decent country on this planet.

Didnt F1 have to BAN blocking because of incidents on the track?

I still have several people telling me that the wheel went over the fence and not through it as I had been hearing, so I did some looking and finally found the slo-mo video. It went through.

Sorry if already posted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-yQLiAia9c

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On Twitter, follow me @Austin_F1 for all the latest breaking news and current photos...

No Tim, it went over the fence, clearly. I didn't even need a replay to confirm this either. I saw the crash, I was watching the race when it happened. It was easy to see that the wheel came apart from Larson's car as he spun around while hitting the catch fence. This doesn 't happen all that much and yes the catch fence did exactly what it was designed to do.

One went through, one went over. The one that went over is the one that landed 20 rows up, on someone's face,

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Sebastien Vettel, the youngest driver ever to have the fastest car in F1 for four consecutive years

Those waiver notices are not, may not and in many cases cannot be enforced in court of law.
Read up on that. Court can toss such waivers out. In fact waive "any and all liability" do not include hazards created by the activity provider or non participating activity itself. That holds true here in my country, and in fact most countries.
Do read up on this issue. All this waiver notices are handled with caution in court. Just because the organiser decides to put it there on wall or even on tickets does not absolve them of all responsibility and liability.

Organisers know this and usually settle any such cases by compensation out of court before things get ugly. Not to mention to avoid bad publicity.

They don't absolve the relevant parties from liability entirely, but anyone bringing suit would have to prove those parties were negligent in some way to get anywhere. Those parties also have gobs of insurance for the same reason.

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I'm going to ask a different question than Fat Albert - what is with people today that they can't accept that an accident is just that, an accident? Why do so many people think they are entitled to a monetary pay out for more than any loss of earnings or potential future earnings?

If anyone is responsible for this situation, it should firstly be the driver as he didn't judge how long his car was, or possibly the team is at fault for not testing the driver enough in this particular aspect of racing. The circuit has adequate crowd protection barriers according to the organisers specifications, so maybe NASCAR is at fault for not having strict enough specs for the venues. Then again the committee or team who wrote the regs could be at fault for not looking into every possible outcome.

You get the idea, basically it was an accident, it was anybodies and nobodies fault. If for any unfortunate reason people are hurt at motor racing events and are able to claim it'll open the door for others to claim, insurance prises will rise, circuits will charge even more for admission, attendance may drop, the circuits then can't afford the hosting fees and the races will stop.

I hate the modern sueing/claiming for everything culture in the UK and US at the moment. All it does is drive up prices for consumers.

And before anyone days how far fetched the 3rd paragraph is, it's no more far fetched than the 2nd, which highlights a number of different highly plausible roads the circuits lawyers could go down if they had to.

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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals that Chuck Norris allows to live.

I would only feel entitled to some kind of compensation in a situation like this if the response of medical crews to the incident were unduly slow because there was no procedure or plan in place, or an ambulance couldnt get to or from the scene for the same sort of reason, something like that.

That's something I see a lot of at horse shows. When you sign the entry blank you're agreeing to the same sort of warning you see at motorsport facilities, and the memberships you need in various organizations to be able to compete also come with the same warnings and waivers and all that, but you still get people falling off and suing for damages because the first person to reach the accident was the in-gate guy or the jump crew and they told you to sit up and see if you were okay instead of waiting for an EMT to arrive and it turns out you had a spinal injury that was made worse by moving, or it took 20 minutes to get an ambulance and you've sustained some kind of brain damage from your head injury not being treated immediately. I think that's fair, as the governing body for competitions requires a certain level of safety be provided by the show organizer or property and if they haven't delivered it they are negligent. I jump 1200 pound animals over 6' arrangements of sticks because I know it is required that there is an ambulance with EMT's somewhere near the show ring, and if it weren't required to be there, I might not take the risk. So if you've not provided it, you've duped me into thinking the standard level of safety is there. Something like that.

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Watching the press conference the Daytona track manager said that the policy and procedures they had in place worked perfectly and that most of the injured were tended to within a minute of the accident. That is an outrageously fast reaction time.

Yup as I said earlier, by all accounts their emergency procedures worked well.

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No Steve. It didn't.

I'm not sure if any of you are including me in the group that thinks life is without risk or that all risk can be eliminated, or the group that thinks these people deserve monetary damages. I'll let the court decide that. As for the risk, heck, I'm a firefighter. My job is all about weighing risk vs reward.The fan should expect that everything reasonable has been done to assure their safety, just as I can in my job. Is it reasonable to expect that large parts like wheel/suspension assemblies or entire motors & transmissions cannot rip right through the catch fence into fan areas? I think it is.

Anyway, for those who still cannot see it, maybe this will help. This guy takes a great look on video. Start watching at about 5:00. You can clearly see the wheel assembly separate from the car, go through the fence, and travel on an upward trajectory into the stands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4hbpmM_Eww


That fence is very high and hangs way out over the track 8+ feet:

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The car was into the fence when the wheel assembly came off, so the overhang blocked the path above it. There's no way the wheel could have gone up and over into the crowd from there. It went through.

In these photos you can see what I mean.

In this photo the wheel assembly is already on the other side of the catch fence. The car, moving at a high rate of speed, has just hit the catch fence support pole (the bent one on the right) and has only traveled a few feet since hitting it. The wheel is right there and you can see the gaping hole in the fence. If the wheel had gone up and over, it never could have gotten back into this position so quickly. Had it gone up, it would have hit the overhang of the catch fence and been deflected. Also, assuming it could clear the overhang in an up-and-over trajectory, coming back down to the position shown in the photo, it wouldn't have ended up where it actually did. It had to go through the fence to be in that position at that point in the sequence.



Another at almost exactly the same time, but from a different angle:



...and another, just slightly earlier. Here you can see the car has just hit the pole and is still rotating from that impact. The wheel has just come off and is already clearly on the other side of the fence. You can see the steel catch fence cable between the wheel and the photographer.




The wheel went through.

Here's an image from above, in front, and from the grandstand side that shows the wheel coming through the fence at the moment of impact.

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Look at your last photo...how did THAT wheel end up 20 rows into the seats? There were 2 wheels involved.

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It was on an upward trajectory as you can see in the video in the same post....and it didn't go very far. 9 rows up and about 50 feet down the track.

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Then where did the other one come from? There was one stuck IN the mangled fence. And I still see one sail clear over top in every video. If it went through, based on its height, there would have to be damage to the top of the fence, which there wasn't. If it went through lower, none of the rest of the stuff that was stopped by the fence would have been stopped, as there'd be a big puncture in it.

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Clearly as you say 2 tires got to the other side of the fence. Looks like they both went through. In the last video you can clearly see the wheel assembly go through the fence and continue up into the stands on a low but upward trajectory.

There were multiple gaping holes in the fence, and I haven't been looking at the wheel and motor that came to rest right there. They didn't go flying and hit anyone as the other wheel did.











Some of you are still advancing the idea that the wheel that went up to row 9 got there by flying up and over the fence. Then how did the wheel fly off the car, up and out over the track to clear the catch fence overhang, then back over the fence above the crowd? That's some magic wheel. Take a look at the photos. If the wheel had gone straight up or toward the grandstands, it would have been deflected back toward the track by the catch fence overhang.

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This crash reminded me of the Adrian Fernandez crash in CART back in 1998. I think it was at Michigan Speedway, where the cars are travelling over 220 mph. Luckily, there were no fatalities here, unlike back then.

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you are making the assumption that the wheel that when over came off the car was against the fencing and below the overhang. However the crash started in the middle of the track well away from the over hang. Then he gets spun and impacts with a car between him and the wall again away from the underneath the overhang. The front of the car wipes around away from the wall.

So there is plenty of room for the wheel to go up and over and not be caught by the over hanging fence which realistically only over hangs the Safe-t-barrier or whatever it's called. .

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Disclaimer: The above post maybe tongue in cheek.

"I thought I'd get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual."

Well, some waivers, depends on jurisdiction, may be limited, void or illegal. Waiver is not very strong protection.

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Any old sap can pull teeth from a dead crocodile.
It takes a man to pull teeth from a live one.

It looks to me that the catch fencing is designed to effectively catch very large debris (ie. cars) and small light debris (body work and such). However, something heavy and small enough hitting it at speed would enviably go in-between the heavy gauge wire and the supports. And as is clearly shown above, the chain link fencing isn't up to stopping such a projectile from going into the crowd.

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First of all, the overhang hangs past the Safer barrier. Moreover, the car clearly had both its wheels just before and at at the point of impact with the catch fence pole above the Safer barrier, which comes out 4 or 5 feet inside the catch fence. From that point on the whole front of the car is gone past the firewall and Larson isn't hit again (luckily).

As for my "assumptions", I'm not assuming anything. It's all visible right there in the videos and in the photos which clearly show the wheel assembly flying through the air on the other side of the fence immediately after impact.

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