People say “save the trees”, but my friend was killed by a tree in high school. They’re sneaky creatures.

I wonder if the Mazda driver had a heart attack or other sudden health crisis, and lost consciousness, which then led to a crash. I’ve seen about a half-a-dozen deaths at the race track that were like that.

When you’re 68 years old, lots of activities become high-risk!

This is why I why I refuse to drive near trees. Those fuckers will jump out in front of you with no warning.

All Targa cars (outside the touring category) are required to have cages, race seats, and 6 point belts, not to mention full safety gear for the competitors

You know this is a complex thing all around. I hope I die quickly doing something I love and not in a nursing home but amother thing stands out to me in thid article and that's the racer naned Dick Johnson.

Thats ... just dumb. You cant automatically blame this year’s deaths on the organisers.They’ve run this event for nearly three decades and had only two deaths in that whole time.
By all means ban this type of racing but dont throw blame for no reason.

Looking at photos of the aftermath, yeah. I’m wondering if it was just his age, where the sheer inertia of flipping over and then coming to a complete stop killed him, rather than the car structure failing.

The Mazda looked pretty intact with no deformation to the occupant structure. It also appears to have been a prepped car with race harnesses and possibly a cage.

It’s run through winding mountainous tree-lined roads which are intended for people to drive slowly on. They’re not able to erect safer barriers on all of them. I’m not really sure how they can mitigate the risk, other than greatly altering the course on which its run.

I’m sure there will be meaningful investigations into what happened and any possibly mitigations that could be put in place to reduce likelihood in future. Everything I’ve ever heard about the organising team has been overwhelmingly positive, and their safety record was pretty exceptional. Maybe there was some…

That's horrifying and indicative of some mistakes by the organizers.  Two fatal crashes in as many days points towards inadequate safety equipment in the cats and insufficient course recce and preparation.  Racing is dangerous but after over a century we know how to mitigate risk. 

In other words, everyone is to blame. The kids themselves hold the least blame (they are kids, after all, and don’t necessarily have the experience to know “things are dangerous”), and then the parents and Peloton equally take about 49% each. About the only entity in the story not to blame for any of this is the CPSC.

Don’t most treadmills have a thing in the back specifically to prevent that kind of incident? So you can get thrown backwards if you’re on it, or get your hair or clothing sucked into the tread, but can’t actually get sucked under the treadmill?

It’s the new American pastime, forgetting about old shootings because there are too many to keep up with. I’m just glad we don’t have to listen to Drumpf anymore.

It’s sad that I, a SoCal resident, completely forgot this incident happened because there’s been countless public and mass shootings since then.

In Albany, NY we have this big converted UHaul indoor storage building. It’s right on the Hudson River near the port, so I assume at one point 100 years ago it was related to marine trade/storage. It has a full size UHaul truck on the roof, which spins in the wind. It’s amusing. The building and the truck also showed…

You realize that between posting to this comment thread where most people will never find it, and replying to me instead of the original person who asked, this may be the most significant comment you write that no one ever reads? 😁

What I’m saying is: It won’t overheat.

Why does everyone think I’m so old?!

This article is pure Golden, I’ve already bookmarked it.