I just finished reading "Portrait of the 60s" and what amazed me is that every second driver was killed on the track. Amazing. I can't believe there was so little done about the problem when greats like Clark finish as mushed corpses.. Any ideas on why it was shrugged off in sucha way??
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"Life will not break your heart, it'll crush it" - Henry Rollins.
Why so blase' about death in the 1960s?
Started by
Don Capps
, May 07 2000 07:47
3 replies to this topic
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#2
Ray Bell
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- 81,451 posts
- Joined: December 99
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Posted 07 May 2000 - 12:46
It was hardly shrugged off.. The sixties, in fact, was the era in which the most was done about it. The fifties, perhaps the forties more so, saw plenty of deaths right through the range of racing world wide. Speedway killed some 48 drivers in the USA in 1948 (?) alone - it was nearly banned.
Greats died in tinpot races all over the place, some died in F1 and Le Mans and the like, and a lot of lesser drivers died in all sorts of races.
By the beginning of the sixties there was a reduction in the deaths, for whatever reason we could debate for ages... then there was a spate of deaths in the mid-sixties that saw the implementation of many lifesaving systems. Belts started to be worn in 1967, were made mandatory - I think - towards the end of 1968... fireproofing drivers' overalls became a fact in about 1964/5, improving steadily over the next few years. Safety fencing became a target, tracks were being upgraded, John Hugenholz's famous catch fences were erected all over the place.
The efforts started to show visible gains and in time great gains, but they began in the mid-late sixties.
Some say the fact that so many drivers of that earlier era came through the war - as did much of the populace - and that helped them bear the losses and the risks - who knows?
We saw an average of about one death a year in Australia in that time, with a reduction in the seventies and eighties. But not much of a reduction... but a lot more racing.
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Life and love are mixed with pain...
Greats died in tinpot races all over the place, some died in F1 and Le Mans and the like, and a lot of lesser drivers died in all sorts of races.
By the beginning of the sixties there was a reduction in the deaths, for whatever reason we could debate for ages... then there was a spate of deaths in the mid-sixties that saw the implementation of many lifesaving systems. Belts started to be worn in 1967, were made mandatory - I think - towards the end of 1968... fireproofing drivers' overalls became a fact in about 1964/5, improving steadily over the next few years. Safety fencing became a target, tracks were being upgraded, John Hugenholz's famous catch fences were erected all over the place.
The efforts started to show visible gains and in time great gains, but they began in the mid-late sixties.
Some say the fact that so many drivers of that earlier era came through the war - as did much of the populace - and that helped them bear the losses and the risks - who knows?
We saw an average of about one death a year in Australia in that time, with a reduction in the seventies and eighties. But not much of a reduction... but a lot more racing.
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Life and love are mixed with pain...
#3
Don Capps
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- 5,933 posts
- Joined: May 99
Member
Posted 07 May 2000 - 07:47
Simply to only add to the great comments that Ray made:
Death was not shrugged off nor was anyone blase, it was just an acceptance of a situation that seemed to lack any easy or "workable" solutions. To a great deal, the fault lay with the organizers of the races and the owners of the venues.
Racing at pretty much any level was at the subsistence level. The organizers were out to turn a profit and were often not above taking the cheap way out on facilities to do so.
Oval tracks were often bordered by wooden fences which was probably the least expensive way to do that particular job, but in turn was easily one of the major causes of deaths in the form of racing. Ditto the situation with chain link fences...
There was also a different attitude -- pretty universal in fact -- that the driver raced at his own risk, and he did in the full knowledge that it was dangerous. However, spectator deaths were always a newsworthy event for the press. Had not Fon de Portago & Ed Nelson killed a group of spectators along with themselves the Mille Miglia would doubtless have carried on for several more years.
Often overlooked in the safety crusade efforts that took hold in the 1960s, as a letter in MotorSport correctly pointed out, was Graham Hill. It is not a stretch of the imagination to realize who got Jackie Stewart and "Big Lou" Stanley on the safety bandwagon, it was Hill. The accident at Spa in 1966 may have been the epiphany for Stewart, but Hill was already at work on improving the level of safety found in racing in Europe.
In an irony that begs belief, a major factor in the raising of the bar in Europe was the safety efforts undertaken by USAC after the AAA Contest Board abandoned its role as the sanctioning body for Champ Car racing. USAC mandated roll bars (that worked...) and several other mechanical features (catch tanks for example) and led the way, with NASCAR, for the development of fuel cells (Firestone produced a system in 1964 that became mandatory in USAC in 1965 & NASCAR shortly after) to reduce the fire hazard from a crash and also the development and use of truly fireproof clothing -- Nomex being the first by 1966.
Sometimes it is sobering to realize just how many open-wheel series drivers died or were seriously injured in just the post-WW2 period. It was dangerous and not all that romantic in the pits where the medical facilities were often sub-par regardless of which side of the Atlantic you were on.
Safety was perceived as a drain on resources to both the race organizers and the management of many teams. In 1963, when John Sears imported a Holman Moody 427 Ford Galaxy 500 to race in the British saloon car series, he was forced to remove sections of the roll cage by the organizers! Why? Because the roll cage provided "stiffening" that was not found in the production car...
No, people close to racing during this period were not callous or blase and nor did they truly shrug off the deaths and injuries to those in the sport. It was the dark side of the sport and one that is easily shoved off to the side when we look at this era. However, the converse of this dismal level of safety was that there was a level of co-operation and the agreement - unspoken or otherwise - among the competitors to not do anything stupid.... minding one's manners was truly a matter of life and death.
Sorry, spoke too long and this probably should be the basis for a column in the future.
See you.
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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…
[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 05-07-2000).]
Death was not shrugged off nor was anyone blase, it was just an acceptance of a situation that seemed to lack any easy or "workable" solutions. To a great deal, the fault lay with the organizers of the races and the owners of the venues.
Racing at pretty much any level was at the subsistence level. The organizers were out to turn a profit and were often not above taking the cheap way out on facilities to do so.
Oval tracks were often bordered by wooden fences which was probably the least expensive way to do that particular job, but in turn was easily one of the major causes of deaths in the form of racing. Ditto the situation with chain link fences...
There was also a different attitude -- pretty universal in fact -- that the driver raced at his own risk, and he did in the full knowledge that it was dangerous. However, spectator deaths were always a newsworthy event for the press. Had not Fon de Portago & Ed Nelson killed a group of spectators along with themselves the Mille Miglia would doubtless have carried on for several more years.
Often overlooked in the safety crusade efforts that took hold in the 1960s, as a letter in MotorSport correctly pointed out, was Graham Hill. It is not a stretch of the imagination to realize who got Jackie Stewart and "Big Lou" Stanley on the safety bandwagon, it was Hill. The accident at Spa in 1966 may have been the epiphany for Stewart, but Hill was already at work on improving the level of safety found in racing in Europe.
In an irony that begs belief, a major factor in the raising of the bar in Europe was the safety efforts undertaken by USAC after the AAA Contest Board abandoned its role as the sanctioning body for Champ Car racing. USAC mandated roll bars (that worked...) and several other mechanical features (catch tanks for example) and led the way, with NASCAR, for the development of fuel cells (Firestone produced a system in 1964 that became mandatory in USAC in 1965 & NASCAR shortly after) to reduce the fire hazard from a crash and also the development and use of truly fireproof clothing -- Nomex being the first by 1966.
Sometimes it is sobering to realize just how many open-wheel series drivers died or were seriously injured in just the post-WW2 period. It was dangerous and not all that romantic in the pits where the medical facilities were often sub-par regardless of which side of the Atlantic you were on.
Safety was perceived as a drain on resources to both the race organizers and the management of many teams. In 1963, when John Sears imported a Holman Moody 427 Ford Galaxy 500 to race in the British saloon car series, he was forced to remove sections of the roll cage by the organizers! Why? Because the roll cage provided "stiffening" that was not found in the production car...
No, people close to racing during this period were not callous or blase and nor did they truly shrug off the deaths and injuries to those in the sport. It was the dark side of the sport and one that is easily shoved off to the side when we look at this era. However, the converse of this dismal level of safety was that there was a level of co-operation and the agreement - unspoken or otherwise - among the competitors to not do anything stupid.... minding one's manners was truly a matter of life and death.
Sorry, spoke too long and this probably should be the basis for a column in the future.
See you.
------------------
Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…
[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 05-07-2000).]
#4
Huw Jenjin
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- 427 posts
- Joined: June 99
Member
Posted 07 May 2000 - 07:55
it was a generation of people who were still close to the war generations where death was a fact of life (if you'll excuse the phrase). Death did not preclude the enquiries that occur now. That said, if you look at the record in this respect of the isle of Man TT races, the resignation that "death" was just part of it, still exists.
