Malaysia video

[Brett Dikeman]

At 12:05 PM -0700 7/21/03, Gary Brown wrote:

>  In the first minute theres a scene of a F1 car pulling off...then two
>guys try to run across the track to come to the drivers aide. The
>second guy was carrying a fire extinguisher and was hit full on by an
>F1 car. Can't tell how fast the car was going, but it was pretty nasty!

If this is the wreck we were talking about at the Glen last
weekend...then yes, it was very nasty- the course worker was killed,
as was the driver- the fire extinguisher hit the driver in the head.

I've heard a bunch of people say that at the time, the driver was
mourned for(young, talented, senseless death etc etc), but the course
worker was never even mentioned by name- and many in F1 apparently
scorned the course worker.  Talk about spitting on someone's grave.
The guy died coming to the aid of a driver, even if he did lack
judgement to look first; you can't put yourself in someone else's
shoes when shit like that starts goin' down, and the guy paid the
price for not being careful enough.

Nowadays SCCA(and many other organizations) now have explicit
procedures for when someone leaves the protection of the station;
whistle signals from someone watching up-stream, and often a go-ahead
and a incoming warning from the station one up-stream...along with
station(s) displaying yellow(caution) and probably white(emergency
vehicle/crew on track).  In non-racing, it's usually "you don't leave
your station for squat until we stop everyone", and that can involve
either a coursewide red, or a half black, half red(black after, red
before) or if things look pretty tame, just a black all around(pit
in).

Brett
(have read a couple flagging manuals :)
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"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
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