Originally Posted by
sonnybobiche
First off I just want to apologize again for the salty language earlier. That was not on.
As for the actual safety issues and the future of rallying, I think that it's a mistake to sacrifice the sport in any way for what we pretend will be a temporary change to get through a rough patch. I think this is a form of managed decline. It's a vicious cycle. Let's say you make things safer, but it requires some sacrifice to the sport. Pushing crowds back, for example, or requiring all four wheels to be on the car, or getting rid of Safari with its open roads. The result is that the sport is a bit safer, but also has fewer fans and fewer eyeballs. So there's less money, less manufacturer interest. Also, the culture around the sport demands ever-increasing safety, so whatever change you made is now the new normal, and anything less than that is seen as outrageously dangerous. For both of those reasons, there's less money to pay outrageous insurance fees. So you have to go even safer. Eventually someone asks, "hey, why should there be any spectators allowed to line the roads at all? Can't we just close the stages to spectators? That's safer!" Or they might suggest something ridiculous, like, say, an average speed limit.
Anyway, the point is, I don't think this road leads to motorsport being saved. Again, it seems like managed decline. The counterexample to all this is the Isle of Man TT, in which multiple competitors die literally every year, and yet the event is as popular as ever (with the crowds, the riders, and the sponsors) and as far as I know there's no issue with insurance.