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Sad to hear that there was a death of a navigator and the driver with serious injuries, collapsed lungs and limb injuries
It must be pretty demoralising for the organisers having to cancel the rest of the event and today's reivers rally as well out of respect
I heard the car left the road then into a ditch hitting a concrete culvert probably an instant stop
Motorsport is dangerous, another driver died at Donington yesterday and there was the two bikers at the British Superbikes a couple of weeks ago
Makes F1 look safer
Tragically, the co-driver, Dai Roberts who died is the brother of 'Jaffa' Roberts who was killed on the ERC Targa Florio Rally in 2012 when co driving for Craig Breen. Craig himself was killed 2 years ago while testing for the Croatia Rally.......
A totally tragic story......
Unfortunately I think it'll be hard for the Jim Clark to come back from this.
I'm local, went to the Borders Counties Rally a few weeks ago and only missed the Jim Clark as we'd the (too young) grandkids up.
Motorsport is dangerous and can never be risk free, like life itself...
I think it is staggering that there are not more deaths in rally given how tight the margin for error is.
I agree that it is hard to see how the Jim Clark comes back from this though
The three Gravel Events close'ish to me are all gone due to the cost of the forest hire. I think the modern cars are getting to the kind of speeds that made Group B dangerous and with the recent spate of deaths I fear further shrinkage. Single venue, closed events may be all that is left in the South soon, if that is not already the case. Targa events also seem to be struggling to stay running and I fear that the safety aspect may start to be an issue with some of these events as well...
Not sure why you think the rally will struggle to return. That bit of road has been used since the first closed road event in 1997 so even a low estimate of 4000 rally cars passing there before anything happened, that’s an incredibly low risk. Probably nobody even realised the culvert was there.
If it was spectators/media involved like the previous time I’d agree, but that incident changed the whole approach to rally safety in the UK. Closed road events are also more expensive to organise than those in forests.
It’ll never be fully safe for competitors - everyone knows the risks and yet hundreds do it every weekend.
well if that is true that's exactly why they might have a problem. Inevitably someone will be asking if every section of the course needs walked to assess for sudden stop risks off the track and if they need barrier/bails etc. Will it make it impossible? Perhaps not - but given its business model/revenue stream it may not be viable if the expectation is for greater protection.Not sure why you think the rally will struggle to return. That bit of road has been used since the first closed road event in 1997 so even a low estimate of 4000 rally cars passing there before anything happened, that’s an incredibly low risk. Probably nobody even realised the culvert was there.
I agree it is different for competitors. That might not be enough to hide behind - although the TT seems to manage every year with essentially an expectation of fatalities. I've organised lots of events and sat on committee that organise stuff (not motorsport). We always have the possibility of a fatality, getting volunteers to take on those responsibilities is hard enough when it has thankfully so far only been a theoretical risk.If it was spectators/media involved like the previous time I’d agree, but that incident changed the whole approach to rally safety in the UK. Closed road events are also more expensive to organise than those in forests.It’ll never be fully safe for competitors - everyone knows the risks and yet hundreds do it every weekend.
A mate was just down the road from the accident and said that the rain had made the road surface slippy to walk on. It's possible that the change in grip levels contributed to the crash.
The sound of a rally car at full chat to silence in a split second was quite chilling