mal28

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23194752/

what a senseless waste of life

This is why I never race all the people who try to "see what the Porsche can do"

911Dave

Senseless, yes. But the problem is that the spectators were foolishly standing in the middle of the road. Racing wasn't the direct cause of the accident. The road was open to all traffic and a crowd of people were standing in the middle of the road in the pitch black night. Sheer stupidity if you ask me.

todinlaw

I don't disagree that racing in the street is stupid, that is why I track my car and why i think it is safer than my daily drive to work. However, having said that. I am not sure that the race had that much to do with the deaths. 911dave is part right, you don't stand in the street at 3am and you don't drive your car with your lights off either. so it a 3 part deal.

nicoff

Of course, the tornado wasn't the reason why the people died, it was the people that were on its way.

Am I missing something??

greenhouse

That it's easier not to be someplace at 3AM where you KNOW something dangerous is going on.

911Dave

I think you missed my key word, carefully chosen: "direct". The race obviously was why the people were there, but they didn't need to be standing in the middle of the road. If they had stayed on the side of the road, they probably would have been fine. In this respect, the race was an indirect cause, not a direct cause.

fast1

I hear you, but I believe that you are splitting hairs. For example if the spectators were on the side of the road, and one of the cars that was racing lost control and killed the spectators, would you consider the race to be the direct cause of the accident? In this hypothetical case maybe the direct cause would be driver error or a part failure, but nevertheless racing was the root cause in either case. Granted that the intent of the race was not to kill spectators, but street racing is so inherently risky that catastrophes like the one in the referenced story are certainly foreseeable, and I would imagine that law enforcement will treat it as such.

Paul 996

Like 911Dave and others said...read the article. The cars participating in the race didn't hit the spectators.. A car supposedly just driving down the same road approaching the start line plowed into a crowd of stupid spectators standing in the middle of a dark road at 3am masked by clouds of tire smoke from two cars recently drag launching. The bit about the car that hit the crowd not having it's lights on is still up in the air. (it was a crown victoria btw).

A really sad point is that there were granparents there, moms and young teens (at 3 am). Who does this?

fast1

A really sad point is that there were granparents there, moms and young teens (at 3 am). Who does this?

Especially when so many dragstrips are available around the country, and you can do it legally at a reasonable time of day.

fast1

Senseless, yes. But the problem is that the spectators were foolishly standing in the middle of the road. Racing wasn't the direct cause of the accident.

911 Dave: After reading the article, it's on the front page of my local paper, you are right. Racing wasn't the direct cause of the accident. I'm amazed that the driver of the Ford didn't see the spectators. Granted that based on the article, the road isn't well lighted, you still should be able to see people in the road, and on the other hand I would expect the spectators to see the car. Bizarre tragedy.

SrfCity

Regardless, racing will get blamed. RIP to the victims.

H20NOO

Two cars had just performed smokey burnouts and raced away. The approaching car drove into a cloud of smoke and swerved off the road directly into a large crowd (approx 50 people) before coming to a stop. Racing is the most powerful contributing factor as there would have been no smoke cloud and no crowd at the edge of the road at 3:40am were it not for the illegal race activity. The dense cloud of tire smoke is a clear hazard to drivers on that road, which has a posted speed limit of 55mph if I recall correctly. Imagine driving into a dense fog bank at 60mph. Happens all the time and fog is often cited as the cause of the pile up. Only in this case, the fog was generated by the racing activity. Other factors will be viewed as secondary at best. Tragic but avoidable.

MC