Quote:
Originally Posted by thstone
Its not different in the car world. I am the same as you - I assume that I will have to pay for any damages to my car regardless of fault. And I have.
This situation was a little different and let me explain - there is a certain level of agreed and accepted risk that every driver takes when going wheel to wheel racing. But its a shared risk. We accept that none of us are professional drivers and mistakes will be made and that comes with the territory. And if you can't live with that, both personally and financially, then you shouldn't be out there racing.
After 100 races, I know what a racing incident is and I have no problems with that. If we were side by side racing for position and we hit, there would have been no hard feelings on my part. That is just racing and I accept it just like everyone else.
But in this case, the mistake was so egregious that it went outside the bounds of accepted risk. This was a rookie driver's mistake, something that should have been learned during a driver's HPDE days and something that no licensed racing driver should make.
And that set it apart. The other driver violated the agreed risk by acting negligent.
Why do I consider this negligent?
This driver already had a 13/13 and was on probation from a previous accident. He should have been on his best driving behavior.
This driver was racing two Boxster's who weren't in his class.
This race had a split start which means that he started a half-lap ahead of us. He was in last place in his class and last place overall. The two Boxster's were racing in the Top 10.
The Competition Director announced in the drivers meeting NOT to try to pull back onto the track after putting two wheels off since doing so would surely result in a wreck.
Add all of that up and you have a driver who isn't meeting the minimum expectations for being out on a track and racing in a safe manner. Racing while not meeting the minimum requirements for safe racing is negligent in my book.
That's how I saw it. I might be wrong, but you might feel different when someone plows into you and the reason it happened is that they don't know what they're doing.
At the next race (which I did not attend), I was told that the Chief Driving Instructor took to the podium in the drivers meeting and told 911 drivers that if they are being passed by Boxster's then they aren't in the race and to let them go.
And at the end of the day, the other driver mostly agreed with my viewpoint. He knew that he effed up big time and he knew that it wasn't a racing accident. It was caused by his doing exactly what the CD told everyone not to do. That is why he offered to pay what he could. Fair enough for me. But the 911 parts thing caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting that at all.
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Totally reasonable -- and in fact I'm often the caboose in the SPB world (or close to it) but -- as a newish SPB guy I was evaluated by an experienced racer as -- you're fine, you're just a tad slow everywhere :-)
With a lot of Endurance racing experience -- I'm situationally aware and I also am very cognizant of mixed-class racing. Heck I enjoy the thrill of racing, but I just as much enjoy the bench racing with beers after -- and if you can't coexist on track -- who's going to want to have a beer with you after.
I'm glad he made the reach -- even if it was with paper weights :-)
More importantly -- I'm glad you're back on track!
Mike