(no subject)

[rain_gryphon]

It's been 30 years since Nicki Lauda's accident. It doesn't seem that long ago. I remember drivers pulling off the course to try and help him. I wonder if people would still do that today? I've got my doubts, honestly, with all the pressure that's put on teams to finish well. The last time I recall seeing someone pull off course to help with a rescue was the 1996 Five Hundred, and it was an unusual thing even then.

Admittedly, today there are people in fireproofs stationed around the track, whereas in the old days a fully-suited driver was the only one who could enter a fire.

*****

They're having a beggar shortage in India. Fortunately, the locals are resourceful.

*****

The Chinese still make
Coloured Fluorescent tubes. A number of Chinese companies still make coloured NE2 neon peanuts, but none of them seem to sell to the consumer market - only to manufacturers.

Comments

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

I wonder if people would still do that today?

I have a vague recollection of it happening in F1 in the quite recent past - since the mid-1990s - but I can't remember the details at all. Mind you, the fact that it sticks in my mind shows how rare it is - though of course it was never a universal thing; this is an interesting quote from David Purley:

"What surprised me," he said, "was that no other drivers stopped to help. There was all this talk of 'Purley trying to rescue his friend' and so on, but that wasn't the case – I didn't know Roger well at all. What happened was purely a reflex action. In Aden, if one saw a burning tank one tried to help the people inside, and it was exactly the same at Zandvoort. A matter of a man needing help. That car burned for several laps, and all the 'safety crusaders' just kept on bombing through the accident scene without even backing off..."

He was talking about the Dutch GP in 1973, when he alone tried (unsuccessfully) to save the life of Roger Williamson after seeing his car ablaze. The marshals were shockingly unprepared - Purley said that one of the fire marshals was dressed in a plastic mac. I've seen (grainy, rather distant) TV footage of this crash and its aftermath, and even in that form it's quite horrific.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

1973 was just a bloodbath all around. I quit following racing partway through, and didn't really regain much interest outside of the Five Hundred until 1977.

On a bright note, I discovered a few years back that Joe Leonard, whom I'd thought had died in a catastrophic crash that summer at Ontario actually recovered, and remains quite happy and healthy.

All incipient old-man curmudgeonliness aside, people did used to behave differently and better in emergencies. One of my books has a picture of Joe Leonard and some spectators trying to get Mel Kenyon out of his burning car in 1965. What's striking about it is that men in ordinary summer clothing are just coming at the run toward this blazing car to try and do something. You wouldn't see that today. It's not that people aren't as brave as they used to be, but rather that there's this sort of ingrained helplessness these days. We're taught to wait for the professionals to come, and not to do anything for ourselves. There's almost a sort of nervous guilt that one feels in an emergency these days, and I'm convinced that's neither good nor normal.