Idaho 2014

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Morison

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john vanlandingham
Most events last 10 years have seen 50 to 60% at least.

If you bothered to look outside your back yard you' see that isn't even close to being true. I'm sure you can find some F-Cup entry lists that would show more volvos than subarus taking to the stages...

Or, are you OK with a selective view of the sport... in which case looking at the event's history is more relevant.

2014: 48% of the 54 car entry is Subaru (80% of the top 10 cars, 73% of the top 15...40% of the DNFs)
2013: 38% of 34 entries
2012: 43% of 39
2011: 72% of 18*
2010: 21% of 28
2009: 32% of 37
2008: 53% of 19*

*abnormally low entries

So in other words... yah, a pretty good year for subrau entries at Idaho. Why the need to pooh pooh it?

Look Trollonson go troll elesewhere, Gene made an offhand comment about the numbers of the Subarus at the event...I responded with an offhand comment to Gene's comment...
Only a unrepentant troll TRYING to find fault would try in the obviously trollish was and twist that to be a "pooh pooh."

Go away Morison. I ma tired of your shit, and we did just fine for years on this forum without your digging and scratching to virtually every offhand, conversational comment I make...

As for looking out my back yard, that is funny..Ironic maybe. Just today I had a vistor here from Quebec who rallies some Subaru thing and he was commenting on the endless trolling and corrections and lecturing you and lately Gene do and I said I guess the thing motivating them, I hypothezied was that they are ---and your little spiritual brother---the epitome of a local legend --in their own minds and seemed to make a poinbt to avoid ever looking into any details anywhere else in the world for anything from car choice to build techniques, to organisational ideas or solutions...because that would remind them of just how small their their horisons were....and he recalled your adamant refusal to make even the merest effort to look up the Australian Federations problems and eventual solution to their blunder of adopting full Group N spec---and their eventual tests and rule change giving people the option of full GpN or no restrictor and pump gas....he said "I wanted to scream at him "look it up yourself you lazy bastard!!" but didn't becaue I don't want to get into these endless correction and lecturing shit from that guy"

So while I normally have cast the eye far afield, and get endless grief for that ( in before "This isn't Your-up! It's different here! ---just what is different is never explained) here I was just talking about the little fun events we have here in North America....and its back up with the numbers of Subarus i make suspension for: over 60%

Can't you find someplace where you compulsion to correct and lecture every single comment is welcomed? Don't you have a local forum up there in Calgary??

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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heymagic

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john vanlandingham

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heymagic
Massive Subaru presence looking at the results, wow.

25 out of 61 isn't even half..
Most events last 10 years have seen 50 to 60% at least.

6 Golves outta 61....meh, OK..

That would be 52 cars , pretty much 50% and 10 out of the top 12. Can't you ever post anything without being such a Debbie Downer? J

Ooops..Counted wrong---seems like people don't like to make results easy to count up..or i misheard from somebody who was there and said 62, whatever....doesn't change anything important.

Why do you take it as a "downer" comment Gene. Totally neutral comment...an impression...
Like Trollonson you are looking for offense..
Quiit being such a fucking grouch.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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phlat65
Maybe it is as simple as a laminated incedent card for all workers and teams. Simple flow chart stuff. Crashed car? injuries? Incoherent co-driver wandering the road? Send medical.

This is a good idea and one that would be relatively simple/cheap to implement. It would also help with further standardizing procedures between events.

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Matt Smith

Racing in glorious black and red

My daily life is a Saab story (sold!)

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Rallyst165
I agree that both the workers and entrants need more training.

A few challenges to this... first is the issue that we have with both volunteer recruitment and volunteer retention. Second is that many competitors are only doing 1-3 events per year. For all these the challenge is how often the organizer has access to the volunteer/competitor to train them and how much they forget between events. Fortunately red cross situations are rare so there are limited opportunities for real world practice for volunteers or competitors. Further making training difficult.

I do like Sean's suggestion of an incident flow chart to help guide in the field decision making in these situations. I am definitely going to expand volunteer training for red cross situations for Sandblast next year.

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Matt Smith

Racing in glorious black and red

My daily life is a Saab story (sold!)

In theory there is a safety plan, very detailed with radio locations, evac locations, emt and ecrew info, and so on. We have pages of info for every stage. We have repeater radios in bad locations. I can't imagine the guy 1/4 mile from the wreck having a radio and a red cross and help not being dispatched from start of stage. Maybe a lack of training or procedure? Our guys over here are constantly meeting, training and working together. They are like a club in many ways.

Really seems like two issues , the competitors who went past. Possibly 2 cars and a MotoX looking at results. Such a huge breech of basic rally protocol. That is an education issue.

The system or procedure seems to have failed a bit, that just needs tuning and is not hard to fix. Volunteers can make mistakes either way. I remember a very experienced Steward tossing a redX when Travis crashed at Olympus one year on a non-injury incident. Total mess up in an opposite situation.

Cage did its job. Some days people get hurt. It isn't always a high speed deal either, Seans wife got dinged pretty good when they crashed the Merkur. I get tired of the guys coming thru tech and whining about cage padding. Pad the crap out of it! You never know where an object will hit or a bar will bend.

We still have two good friends with us and a vision of how to improve things.

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Rallymech
Massive Golf presence. I don't remember having seen so many.

the amount of VW's on the entry list is how I ended up there this year

we had such a great time at Olympus, Seana (the one who takes the pics) looked at the entry list for Idaho (we weren't going to go, she had a family thing same weekend), on the way home she was already bribing her husband to let us go

I believe one of her comments was "I kept going around saying '8, 8 VWS!' and laughing like the count from sesame street"

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heymagic

So ya, good VW turnout Robert. Was the 122 a really clean old grey one that I just logged?

looked blue to me



does that mean there's another one out there?

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Morison
was under the impression that CARS was the only sanctioning body that required teams to stop if no OK. All three rulebooks have similar language, CARS is just the one with heavy penalties attached (10 minutes PLUS $500)

Another rally friend hadn't heard about Brian's crash.

Here's his thoughts:
"bull shit, OK or +, there is no two ways about it, you see one or you see the other
if you don't, you stop
pull their license, make an example
that stuff isn't cool at all
the first responder is the next competitor mostly, and if they aren't doing their job, then they don't deserve to race
seriously, an example needs to be made
half hearted apologies don't cut it
even fully meant apologies don't cut it
organizers need to make it clear, you stop. first priority is safety"

Without a specific rule, any potential punishment is at steward discretion, which they are much more concerned with the incident than punishment when the event is ongoing so often this is completely overlooked. I think a minimum punishment should be defined in the rulebook. If you don't see a competitor holding an OK sign you stop. I think 10 minutes and $500 is pretty minimum when you consider that minute could be difference between getting pressure on a severed femoral artery and having a chance vs. bleeding out before anyone gets there.

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Grant Hughes

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heymagic
In theory there is a safety plan, very detailed with radio locations, evac locations, emt and ecrew info, and so on. We have pages of info for every stage. We have repeater radios in bad locations. I can't imagine the guy 1/4 mile from the wreck having a radio and a red cross and help not being dispatched from start of stage. Maybe a lack of training or procedure? Our guys over here are constantly meeting, training and working together. They are like a club in many ways.

Really seems like two issues , the competitors who went past. Possibly 2 cars and a MotoX looking at results. Such a huge breech of basic rally protocol. That is an education issue.

The system or procedure seems to have failed a bit, that just needs tuning and is not hard to fix. Volunteers can make mistakes either way. I remember a very experienced Steward tossing a redX when Travis crashed at Olympus one year on a non-injury incident. Total mess up in an opposite situation.

Might be a good opportunity to figure out what really caused the issues after the incident, and do a root cause analysis properly so the right issues get resolved.

The comment was made that it doesn't happen often, so it's hard to train for. I disagree. We do it all the time in the oil and gas industry, you train for things that hopefully will never happen, but when they do it is important to baseline based on a real occurance.

Taproot is a good tool to use. Hit me up on PM if anyone from that side would be interested in doing the analyis. You don't need the software.

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12xalt

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heymagic

So ya, good VW turnout Robert. Was the 122 a really clean old grey one that I just logged?

looked blue to me



does that mean there's another one out there?

Nope that's it. Couldn't remember dark blue or dark grey..it's an old guy thing.

I'm not a pitchfork and torch kind of guy, so yes it needs looked at afterwards and I'm sure both Idaho Rally and NASA are reviewing the incident. I would ask that it be done in a fashion that we all can utilize the results for the future and not swept under the proverbial carpet. Education and witch hunt aren't the same thing.

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heymagic
I'm not a pitchfork and torch kind of guy, so yes it needs looked at afterwards and I'm sure both Idaho Rally and NASA are reviewing the incident. I would ask that it be done in a fashion that we all can utilize the results for the future and not swept under the proverbial carpet. Education and witch hunt aren't the same thing.

Couldn't agree more. The most USELESS resolutions to issues come about when you choose to use a scapegoat instead of actually addressing issues. People make mistakes, so proceedures and systems should be put in place that are effective and efficient. It's always nice to learn from other's mistakes too, rather than your own.

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heymagic

Nope that's it. Couldn't remember dark blue or dark grey..it's an old guy thing.

bummer, another one would have been awesome

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MattWatson
Couldn't agree more. The most USELESS resolutions to issues come about when you choose to use a scapegoat instead of actually addressing issues. People make mistakes, so proceedures and systems should be put in place that are effective and efficient. It's always nice to learn from other's mistakes too, rather than your own.

Absolutely agree.
I've been directly involved in a few incidents at events and have seen things from just about every perspective. (Having a serious accident, coming across a serious accident, running an event where there was a serious accident, running an event where a car 'disappeared' for a significant amount of time (~8 minutes), being on the board of directors for the sanctioning body where there has been a serious incident)
One incident, involving a slow car on a slow stage, would very likely have been fatal had it not happened right in front of spectators that included several trained first responders.

This isn't a new problem, and when you start looking at the various scenarios it gets overwhelming very quickly. In the end, the lynch pin for things going 'wrong' - or not as good as they could have gone - is some form of communications failure.

When you look at a variety of scenarios, the delays in responding can get long fast. There are a lot of variables, but as an example, lets look at a stage length of 12 minutes with the first radio point at 4 minutes into the stage (call it 4 miles,) and a second radio point at 8 minutes/miles.
For simplicity, the first car disappears early in the stage.

If everything works properly.
~ 5 minutes: Radio calls in second car passing without seeing first car.
~ 9 minutes: Second Radio point also reports second car past with no sign of first car.
~13 minutes: At finish, second car is asked if they have seen the first car.
95% of the time the answer would be yes, stopped/off and OK
But, the answer could be, and has been, NO.
If no: Sweep/FIV is called to enter the stage, stage starts are suspended.
~14 minutes: Third car is asked if they have seen the first car.
Most of the time it will be yes, saw co-driver with an OK sign.
If yes, Sweep called off and car starts resumed. (it is unlikely sweep would be in the stage within a minute)
If no, sweep continues to go into the stage and look for the first car SOMEWHERE in the first 4 miles. Lets assume an average of 20mph when looking for a car (probably too fast) which would be 12 minutes if it was just before the radio point. (Again, real world example)

That's 22 minutes from the time of the incident until first responders arrive on the scene - if everything works right.

It's also 13 minutes before the first chance of knowing the crew is stopped and OK.

It gets more complicated, and much longer time delays, when you start looking at more cars and more complications.

This is one of the reasons CARS looked at real-time satellite tracking and car to car status update systems, and RallySafe in particular. In the end, it's too expensive to implement without some outside funding to support it. (~$120/entry) But the picture of what's happening at an event is so very much clearer and is 'real time.'

The interesting thing - that many have pointed out before - is that the end result of Brian and Krista's accident wouldn't have been any different with RallySafe, even if the response time were cut significantly, so how far do you chase 'improvements?' (Interestingly, tracking has been mandated even at the regional event level in Australia)

Drilling in the No OK=Stop mentality is important.
Ham Radios in competing cars is also a huge benefit, if you can reach someone. >$200 one time expense.

---

First Rally: 2001
Driver (7), Co-Driver (44)
Drivers (16)
Clerk (10), Official (7), Volunteer (4)
Cars Built (1), Engines Built (0) Cages Built (0)
Last Updated, January 4, 2015

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john vanlandingham
Blame is for idiots. losers.

Drilling in the "If you DO NOT SEE OK YOU ARE REQUIRED TO STOP" has not worked, obviously.
Equal in fail is the "YOU MUST DISPLAY THE OK SIGN or THE....."

Those rules and that wording has been in the books so long I can't remember EVER not seeing it, but that only goes back to '84-86...


And every serious incident we have reports of people passing


AND people not displaying OK or STOP


Maybe the only remaining thing to do is what we haven't done:
Rule with an iron fist.


or


I like as few rules as possible and I like simple clear ones to go with my simple and clear mind so don't know if MORE rules are needed but we have to do something and probably something different that what we know hasn't worked..which has been about as harsh as:

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.