Posted on 08/15/2010 4:39:13 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
An off-road truck plowed into a crowd and scattered "bodies everywhere" moments after sailing off a jump at a California race Saturday, killing eight people and leaving 12 injured, authorities and witnesses said.
The crash came shortly after the start of the California 200 race, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. PDT, San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said.
Bachman said eight people died and 12 were injured, several of them seriously. Seven ambulances and 10 emergency aircraft responded to the scene. Most of the injured were airlifted from the area to Loma Linda University Medical Center or St. Mary's Medical Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Well, that’s the end of that series. Racing is still dangerous, folks.
Someone on an earlier post mentioned the 1950s crash where 80 people were killed. That was Le Mans where the Mercedes driver collided with an Austin-Healy and flew into the crowd. Le Mans is so big that most of the crowd knew nothing about the extent of the crash at the time and the race officials continued the race until its end after the crash.
It was only about 10 years ago when 3 people were killed during a CART race at MIS.
Not too many years ago at Road Atlanta a competitor managed to get punted off the inside of Turn 2, pretty much at the left-hand entrance of Turn 2, and ‘fly’ high enough to pass over the crash fence and land upside down on a parked spectator vehicle. No one seriously injured, IIRC.
If you are familiar with Road Atlanta, you would think that this spot would be one of THE SAFEST spectator spots on the entire circuit. You look at the physics of this crash and you have to wonder “How did a car manage to get there from the track surface?”
Racing happens.
The crowd apparently thinks he did it on purpose.
Sad story, but those don’t sound like typical race fans. There is something missing from the story.
Hmmm? Night off-road race, on open desert, no lights, no barriers, etc, and popular? I wonder with whom. How close do you have to be at night to actually see the race? It sounds a bit stupid, but then I’m not a major off-road race fan. Night off-road stuff would be mainly for the drivers and co-drivers/navigators it would seem. Spectators only get in the way. Sad day in the CA desert.
"There were no barriers at all," Jeff Talbott, inland division chief for the California Highway Patrol, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
This is terrible. Always thought it would happen at the start or along the Baja 1000/500.
That sounds like the idiocy that used to happen in European rallying in the ‘80s. You see video from back then and these one-lane dirt roads are packed six deep with spectators—some even crossing the roads or running out right in front of the cars—while the cars are screaming through powersliding at 100+ mph on the ragged edge. It took a couple of crashes like this one until the organizers (now the WRC) got their heads straight and did a better job of controlling the crowds.
This looks like footage from the 2009 California 200 (warning, a little raunchy right at the end):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f8PLtiPWtE&feature=related
Some surprisingly big crowds there at points.
}:-)4
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