Quote Originally Posted by sollitt
In fact, in nearly 40 years involvement in the sport, by far the majority of incidents I've seen involving spectators being hit by rally cars have ocurred in organised areas or areas where there are large numbers of people gathered together.
Indeed I cannot recall such an incident involving a lone spectator at all.
The freedom to move about and react quickly is the adventurous spectators security blanket. Long may it be so!
I'm sorry to tell You that but it's not true. In last three years I was twice very close to a deadly accident and in both cases it happened with lonely small group of people. Once three (all dead), once something like five (two dead). In second case they were even not just next to the road but were hit by a car which prior that hit a pole and changed it's rolling direction.

It's true that they all were in extremely dangerous places. Mostly they were totally unexperienced spectators who were on their first event (except one in the second case who was just crazy fan). This is what the discussion is about. I agree with You that the rules for spectators should not be extremely strict (I always go somewhere out of crowded areas too) but You need to keep some actions for common crowds of people. They don't have experience, often don't see even basic physic laws and moreover they are largely drunk. But as I said before the areas for them must be made that way to be worth visiting. If they shall go to a place fifty meters from The road behind trees, they will run to all directions and that is a problem because these are the most dangerous groups of spectators.