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Eric Medlen last year and now Scott Kalitta. After the death of Medlan I remember John Force withdrawing his car until he could make it safer against slapping the wall, but there are no mods to make a Funny Car safe from the impact that Scotty took. Longer run off is the key. It looked like a good pass too...RIP Scott

How horrible. Just watched the accident and there are a lot of questions to be asked. How horrible for his wife and two boys.

Re: the chutes, it appears that they tangled. They didn't burn up by the looks of it. It takes a lot of fire to burn them. When the body blows off it deploys the chutes automatically but they can still tangle.

:)

^^^ yeah could be right re: shute, it's possible when the body came off he was knocked out...didn't seem to get off it at all after that moment. Damn shame.

Edited by madbung

I've got mates that either crew for or drive/own Nitro cars, a background in drag-bikes myself & this has been a concern of mine for a long time. Speeds have been getting faster, times have been getting quicker but nothing by & large has been happening to the braking area's at most tracks.

When Senna died, it forced the FIA to address run-off areas for hi-speed circuits, when Earnhardt died at Daytona NASCAR mandated HANS devices & finally implemented soft-walls on the Super-Speedways. When Darrell Russell was killed in Joe Amato's dragster a few yrs ago NHRA mandated shields around the rear of the cage around the drivers head along with tyre changes in conjunction with Goodyrear & when Eric Medlin died testing his Funny Car last yr, John Force Racing took it upon itself to design a safer cockpit which in turn is being mandated by the NHRA as well.

It makes me f**ken angry that has taken the death of yet another racer, but maybe Scott Kalitta's legacy will be the updating of emergency provisions at the end of drag-strips the world over. I know that sometimes there's nothing that can be done if a vehicle is carrying enough speed & energy off the end of the strip & Scott looked like he went into the sand pretty hard, but a lot of sand-traps are so ineffectul they may as well not even be there, incl in my opinion the one at E-town.

We as a species have developed the engineering knowledge & ability to achieve damn near anything, but ONLY when the cost of NOT DOING SO out-strips the cost of actually fixing the problem. How many more lives is it going to cost before this is addressed???

Yes we all die & yes Scott went out doing what he loved, but his death is still a pointless, needless & maybe even a preventable one. :D

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