Crash On Course

I saw the crash, and it turned my stomach. For it was not merely the violence of it, it was the inexplicability of it that left me feeling queasy, sad, and even angry.

I am talking about the horrific crash yesterday morning between Indy Car Racing League (IRL) drivers Paul Dana and Ed Carpenter in which Paul Dana was killed and Carpenter seriously injured during the last practice session prior to the Toyota Indy 300.

Dana, 30 years old, was the IRL's newest rookie driver, and he was married. His wife, Tonya, was notified of his death while sitting in church. And besides being a husband and a driver, Dana was something else: he was a wordsmith, a writer by training, who had worked as a racing journalist before making the amazing move to driving cars that can roll 225 mph.

[For a little perspective on these types of cars, I recall Jackie Stewart, former world-champion Formula One racer and ABC Sports announcer, describe, over 25 years ago, that Formula One cars (closely related to Indy cars) could go from zero to 100 mph and back down to zero––in less than six seconds! Also, these cars are each so carefully crafted, that aerodynamic wings afixed to the vehicles create enough down-force that the cars could, at speed, travel upside-down on a ceiling (and a recent Popular Science article discussed the possibility of having some parts of an auto racetrack inverted). Needless to say, the sort of forces drivers experience in these cars is unimagineable.]

There is no doubt that Mr. Dana's death appears to most viewers to have been avoidable. Every safety precaution not only was utilized, but every warning system was deployed, including a verbal warning from a spotter radioed directly to Mr. Dana, and yet, for some reason, Dana lost a full sense of his surroundings, failing to notice the car --nearly at rest-- sitting in his line of travel: Carpenter's car, which had crashed nearly 10 seconds earlier. At at least 175 mph, Mr. Dana's life came to sudden end. At such speeds, 10 seconds is not a lot of time, nor is a thousand feet much distance. But most of us familiar with racing can tell that everyone around Mr. Carpenter's car was reacting to him, and that Mr. Dana did not.

We won't ever know what caused this crash, though one ESPN writer, and former journalistic rival of Mr. Dana's, has penned this interesting, and sad, essay about Dana's life and what may have contributed to his death. (By the way, Mr. Dana drove for team owners David Letterman and Bobby Rahal.)

But I want to forego commentary here of this tragedy in racing and speak instead of something else, namely, the propensity of people to see things through politics-colored lenses. For while searching the web for commentary on the crash, I found a discussion site listed right near the top of Google's search results. And there I found this comment submitted by a writer simply named Pam from Florida:

The Indy racing teams don't really care about this death, they are right now trying to hire a driver to take Paul's place. It is kind of like the war. Sending dangerous machines around in circles wasting too much fuel, spending too many resources and incurring human death all for what?

His family will miss him and I am sorry! But Indy racing only cares because this horrific event might increase the ratings.

Ask David Letterman.

Sorry, but the lose [sic] of life is just "one of those things," it is all about the big money. [Emphasis added]

Amazing comments, though not incredible ones. It really is no surprise to find someone connecting car racing to the war in Iraq -- is it? -- and yet one surely wishes it was surprising. Of course, I sort of replied to Pam, after one commenter told her she should be ashamed for her comments (from my original comments I've changed the word "things" to "deeds" for use here):

It is a sad fact that accidents happen every second of our lives. It is clear that something went terribly wrong in the cockpit of Mr. Dana's car: something prevented him from being aware of his surroundings. A friend of mine suggested that every race car should be fitted with a crash-sensing remote trigger which instantly warns all other drivers of a crash on course (a switch built like an air-bag sensor), or even one that triggers speed suppression switches (like a kill switch) in all cars on course. ...

I ... don't think Pam should be ashamed. But I think she might want to be a bit more circumspect. We could all reduce everything we do to the simplest components and our actions would look wasteful, stupid, and absurd. Most people don't know that the most toxic industry on the planet is the computer industry, consuming vast amounts of energy and dropping dangerous, toxic metals on the environment (I am not exaggerating one whit). And yet Pam is using a computer. Moreover, everything we do can no doubt be reduced to politics or economics. But that Pam should introduce the war here not only cheapens the war, it cheapens life. Plus, people die not only in sports (like Arena Football), they die doing good deeds. Should we stop doing good deeds? Or should we celebrate the power and privilege of life by continuing to pursue excellence, justice, beauty, truth --or whatever-- in the stark face of death, tragedy and sorrow? Of course David Letterman is looking for a replacement: there is nothing intrinsically shameful about that fact at all; nor is it suggestive of anything other than that death does not hold life hostage.

Peace, and my sincerest condolences to the Dana family. Pam might think Mr. Dana's death was in vain. For that, perhaps, Pam should feel ashamed: Who among us knows the value of a life, or a death?

I once wrote that "sex is friction, Christmas is traffic." In some sense, even perhaps the most scientific sense, both statements are true. There are no words on this computer screen, only tiny bits of flashing photons––that too is true. But to reduce things to these levels in an effort to suggest that this is ALL such things are or will ever be is a reductionism that kills the mind, and stifles the will to breathe. Pam's reduction of car racing is similarly barbarous, I am afraid, for it confines perception to a very narrow set of criteria: political and economic ones, and even those are truncated and severe. That Pam does not understand car racing is fine; that many people think car racing is for the dumb is fine as well. That many people don't realize each race car and its team is a vast science project is also fine; and it's fine that most people don't realize that the science lessons of the racetrack trickle down into the technology of our own cars. But to believe that the racing industry is like the War on Terror, or that it is nothing but the abject abuse of the environment, is probably a fine belief, but it surely is not a refined one.

My condolences to the Dana family.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.