The sponsor of an off-road race in Southern California’s Mojave desert that resulted in tragedy, killing eight spectators, violated a safety requirement in its federal permit to keep spectators 50 feet away from the racing vehicles, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Bureau of Land Management, which granted Mojave Desert Racing a permit to use federal land for its “California 200″ race, said it has launched an “official national review” of Saturday’s accident. The agency also will look into its safety policies for permitted off-road races on federal land under its jurisdiction.
Video footage of the crash obtained by CBS shows people standing less than an arm’s length away from the off-road vehicles as the cars vaulted over a hill and kicked clouds of dirt into the crowd. In another apparent violation of safety requirements, at least 1,000 people attended the Lucerne Valley race, even though the permit allowed for no more than 300 spectators.
The race turned into tragedy when driver Brett Sloppy of San Marcos lost control of his modified Ford Ranger pickup after going airborne on a hill known as the “rock pile.” Along with the eight people killed, 10 were seriously injured.
The sport previously has come under criticism for endangering lives and the environment, The New York Times reports. In 1994, President Clinton signed an act barring the sport in most states, save for a handful of locations in California, Nevada and Arizona.
California Highway Patrol Officer Joaquin Zubieta told The Associated Press that alcohol was not a factor in the crash and that the driver would not be charged. The CHP is continuing to investigate the accident, and will be joined by federal law enforcement authorities.
OK Granted, this is not the kind of sport that you sit quietly in the stands and watch, (sometimes spectators have to help out and change a tire or put out a fire.) Maybe you like a sport where the worst that can happen to a spectator is a punch in the face from another spectator who’s not happy with team alliances or by a foul ball.
That being said, how many football fans bring an air pump rubber patches to the game to fix the ball if it goes flat? This sport is something you can’t understand unless you have been in the desert with the people that love it. Most spectators wouldn’t think twice about changing a tire or digging out even the least known driver if they needed help.
We enjoy the excitement of real racing against man and environment and we are sorry that “mainstream news” interrupted your football weekend with the news of our catastrophic weekend. Honestly, we were happy with the anonymity of our sport and wish we didn’t have the news out there in our business and trying to get someone to legislate our sport into something more like NASCAR where a race can be cancelled when the wind isn’t favorable.
Here’s the sad part: This is going to turn into a blizzard of law suit over liabilities when what really should be looked at is “Were the spectators acting with personal responsibility?” In our litigious society this is going to go from everyone sees that that was a bad idea to who can we sue.
I would hope that had I been one of those eight souls that left us Saturday, my family would not go looking for deep pockets and to cripple something that I loved (off-road racing) in an attempt to console themselves for what is in all actuality a horrible collision of bad judgment and bad timing.