Quote Originally Posted by sonnybobiche View Post
First of all, you're claiming, again, a binary distinction between a 'stupid' place to stand and a 'not stupid' place to stand. I don't think that is really accurate. Some people are willing to tolerate more risk than others. Many people would not be willing to stand along a fast straight, for example, but others would be comfortable there. Risk assessment is a personal thing. The organization can dictate whether certain risks are permissible or not, but is dishonest to pretend that it is anything other than an arbitrary distinction.

Second of all, one of the big complaints made by the media refers to spectators standing too close to the road, period. I'm thinking of this quote from David Evans' autosport piece "Crews were incensed at safety breaches on the stages, with spectators overpowering the marshals to stand just inches away from cars passing at competitive speeds." Yes, david, if by inches you mean feet, and if you ignore the fact that this was along a straight, then that sounds really dangerous. But it probably wasn't too too dangerous, as evidenced by the fact that no one was hit by a car.

I read this piece, again by evans, and I'm left wondering what was so dangerous about the spectators' behavior. https://www.motorsport-news.co.uk/co...-rally-poland/

Looking at Evans' own pictures, the crowd was like 10 feet back at first, and after seeing three or four cars pass at competitive speeds, the crowd collectively came to the conclusion that they were stupidly far away and came to within 3 or 4 feet of the cars. And still, no one was hurt. What is the problem with this? Why is 10 feet back and behind the trees considered "safe", but 3-4 feet away from the road considered an unacceptable danger? I suspect it's because there's a group of people that want to replace Rally Poland with something else, presumably NZ.

Now, I wouldn't have a problem with making some arbitrary distinction between acceptable and unacceptable places to stand if I thought the rules would stay the same from now on. But it's clear that there's a push from the ruling class of motorsport and governments to make things safer and safer, and I think there's no limiting principle to that. It used to be that standing a few feet away was acceptable. Now it's behind the trees. Eventually there will be no spectating allowed. And not long after that, I think there won't be any rallying allowed, period. You have to have some principles. Arbitrarily deciding what is considered too dangerous today is not a principle.
There are stupid places, and more stupid places. And safe places. In rallies in Sweden, Finland and everywhere. Spectators watching stages on stupid places seems to be more common in the Polish round. Don´t argue against that if you want to be seriously respected on this forum.