Life risk in early motor racing

[pertti_jarla]

Once again, from the preface to the Hill-Von Trips book "The Limit", I read the claim that in those days a racing driver had a 33% survival rate. A few years ago I did some counting on the chances of a 50's and 60's championship point scoring F1 driver getting killed racing/practising/testing. Roughly 1/3 seemed to be the chances of getting killed, not surviving. The risk was slightly higher in the 1950s, but still about 1/3.

I have lost my original calculations, but today I listed all drivers taking part in the 1950 F1 season, not including Indy 500. Of all the participants 10 out of 46 got killed racing/practising/testing a racing car that year or in the future. The risk for championship point scoring drivers was higher, 6 out of 16 got killed, that is 1/2,7

1960 season: of all F1 racers (excluding Indy) 12 out of 57 = 1/4,75, of championship point scoring drivers 6/21 = 1/3,5

So, I wonder where that "33% survival rate" comes from? Of course I have only listed the F1 participants.

[555-04Q2]

I think they were just throwing a random number around. If 1 in 3 drivers were dying, the sport would have died along with it, not to mention after 3 seasons you could possibly have had none of the original drivers from the first season left!

Sounds like and old wives story to me

[pertti_jarla]

Yes. The exact quote is: "Between 1957 and 1961 twenty Grand Prix drivers died. Many more suffered terrible injuries. By some estimates, drivers had a 33 percent rate of surviving"
If you give a survival rate like that, you should also give some kind of a time frame, for example "a 33 percent rate of surviving five years". After all, ultimately we have a 0% rate of surviving. If that 33% refers to surviving the years 1957-61, it seems like nonsense. This would have been easy for the author to check.

[pertti_jarla]

I did some counting on the years 1957-1961.
-During those years 116 drivers started in F1 races, not including Indy 500, including non-finishers. Of these 24 lost their lives in racing related accidents during this period or later, that is 1 in 4,9 or about 80% chance of surviving.
-40 of these drivers scored F1 championship points during their careers, 15 of these got killed racing/practising/testing/ during this period or later, that is 1 in 2,7. Which is quite a high risk.
-Of all these 116 starters 14 lost their lives during the period 1957-61. The claim "twenty Grand Prix drivers died" could be including Indy drivers.

[Mintexmemory]

History is littered with 'facts' established by poor understanding of statistics by authors or poor translation into English. It's amazing how many people can't get conversion of fractional probability into % probability correct.
Did you count all F1 races between 57-61 or just World Championship races? What may also be confounding data is the presence of a GP driver (pre-57) who is killed during the period under study but hadn't driven in F1 during that period. Does Hawthorne's death figure in your numbers - death in a vehicle accident but not racing?

[Mark]

A 33% survival rate means that that chances of you being killed was 66%, which doesn't seem right. There were units involved in D-Day which had a better survival rate than that.

[anfield5]

Quite, getting killed dead twice in every three races seems a bit harsh.

I think (not sure) that the quote wasn't meant to be the odds of a particular driver meeting his/her maker, but any driver i.e in any given race there is a 66.67% chance of a driver being killed. If there are 20 starters in said race, the odds of a specific driver dying would be 1 chance in 30 or a 3.33% chance of death (worked out by multiplying the 2/3 chance of a death by 1/20 as a given driver is 1 of 20 in the race). This figure seems more realistic and probably quite accurate, obviously the more drivers in the race the longer the odds of a specific driver dying.

A specific example could be the indy 500 where there were 33 starters. 2/3 x 1/33 = 2/99 or a 2.02% chance that any given driver would perish in the race, rather than indicating that 22 of the 33 were not expected to make it home.

[Mark]

I think it was in a season, rather than in a race, but still.

[anfield5]

I think it was in a season, rather than in a race, but still.

You are more than likely correct.

Then in a 15 race season with 20 starters in each race you would multiply 2/3 by 15/300 (a specific driver starts 15 times out of 300 starters) so the maths is the same i.e 15/300 is the same as 1/20.

[pertti_jarla]

As I said, talking about chances of survival is a bit meaningless unless you specify a time frame. I counted all drivers who got killed directly because of an accident in any kind of racing car, racing/practising/testing, no matter when it happened (including, for example Bonnier who lost his life in 1972). I left out traffic accidents, like Farina and Mike Hawthorn, but there were only a couple of cases like that. I also counted separately those who got killed in 1957-61.
I only included drivers who had taken part in F1 championship races, because "The Limit" talked about "Grand Prix drivers", but accepted all kinds of races as causes of fatality.