Why?! Rip Tim

So, just to shut my self up I looked on youtube to see if tim final pass was on there..... And sure enough some Jack A@# has posted it. Why do people do this? This just makes me sick!
Why cant people be respectful? I think its time we all get on there and flag that video so that you tube pulls it. there is no reason why anyone needs to see that pass again.

One last time why do people think that its okay to do that?

RIP Tim We love you

 

crash videos

any time there is a crash involving a fatality, we as a collective group act responsibly to make sure something like that doesnt happen again, or if we dont it means we havent learned a thing and will repeat our stupidity and somebody else dies because of it. the latest rash of fatalitities from eric medlen to the niver incident really make you ask the question if we are doing anything to improve our safety and spectator safety at all. unless you are in the immediate circle, i would say not. not one thing has been published to the normal racer concerning chassis,wheels,belts,etc that gives any data whatsoever to the normal racer. have i seen anything from the eric medlen project. no. ford? no. all i know is force has a new chassis for this year. can i buy one? no. so, are we really learning anything as a collective group to stop this, or am i going to become a statistic in a too long of a list of drivers kiilled? no offense to anyone in these accidents, but they all seem like a coverup of some type to hide what really hurt these drivers. i understand all the lawyers are standing by to sue any body within reach, but loosing count of how man drivers have lost their lives in the last 10 years alone shouldnt happen. video accounts are the only thing the little man in this sport can go by to process a fix for his car that might save his life in a accident. heresay on the internet isnt accurate enough and the only way ive found to get to the real truth is to talk to the people directly involved in the accident,not whats printed in magazines or announced on tv. as long as we run from the truth, we are never going to make the sport safer to all involved. my heart felt condolences to the family and friends of tim hay, the only thing we can hope is in time we learned something from this, and turn what he loved to do into something positive. dan call sandiego ca

 

The report I was given was that, as we know, the car got out of shape and hit the wall. As you can see from the video it sort of rode the wall and came to rest back on the track. The rear end was further down track, the motor another place, Tim was thrown from the car and didn't have his helmet on when the paramedics got there (which was very very quickly). There are two things we need to answer: Why did his belts allow him out of the car? Why did his helmet come off? I understand this is an outlaw group and sometimes money isn't as prevalent as some of the alky or pro cars, regardless, some of the safety infractions I saw there blew my mind. The "tech guy" more or less stopped by, bs'd, and walked to the next car in line. Full floaters, blower bags, fire bottles, dual chutes, head and neck restraint, head shield just to name a few. I understand some of these aren't "rules" but they should be. I certainly wonder how some of the cars were stickered by NHRA for Adv. ET (blower car, nitro in some cases) given some of the equipment.

Steve

 

Reports

I have posted this idea more than once. When there are transportation accidents the NTSB does an accident investigation and releases the results publicly when they are done. That way others can learn from the tragedies and maybe prevent the next accident. Yet somehow in drag racing all accidents are kept secret. I want to know so I can keep it from happpening to me. Selfish? Very much so! But if we can learn how many accidents can we prevent? Dave Germain

 

OKAY,

To set things strait all I was questioning was the yahoo on youtube that posted his video, good point from the first reply but the second all I can say is easy now, I helped pick the car up along with about 12 other drivers and crew members and put it to rest in its trailer. I will not comment on the condition of it that is for nhra and the Hay family to do.

 

i race in a altered and if it got on the wall or rail and the body was off the belts and the belt brackets would be exposed. would not take much to cut or tare the belts. i will fix that and never thought of it until i read this post. best wishes to the Hay family and all there friends.

 

Guys
As much as this deal saddens me I do believe the Armco guard railing played a part with it's razor sharp top. Here in Australia you cannot get a sanction to run without concrete walls. the last fatality we had here was at an unsanctioned track that had Armco in the braking area, Jet Dragster went into then under the railings........you can imagine the rest.

We must continue to learn stuff from these incidents, lest those lives lost will truly be in vain.
Godspeed Tim
Geoff

 

i have not seen the video, but sometimes looking at videos we can learn from them and analyze more our race cars. dum people post the videos for with the wrong intentions.

 

Accident investigations and information release

First off, let me express my most heartfelt condolences to the Hay family. Tim was a member of a racing group I belong to and he will be very sorely missed by everyone who knew him. There was no keener competitor, finer father, better friend or husband thant Tim. God speed and help see the Hay family through this very terrible time in their lives.

On the matter of the video and other comments that I have seen here.

There was mention that the video may have been posted for the wrong reasons, and I can accept that as a possiblity, since I don't know the person who uploaded it or their motives.

Nevertheless, the video, eyewitness reports, photographs, subsequent scene investigation, inspection of the car remains, and even autopsy results can all be valuable inputs used to establish the forensic aspects of the accident.

We don't want to lose perspective here. We NEED to know what happened, so we can stop it from happening to someone else.

 

Gentleman posting right before me hit it right on the head. I was at Eddyville tuning one of the cars in competition, I took time after it started raining to look at every car there. Yes some of the safety was way way way behind the times, but from what I saw of the wreck, the guardrail killed Tim....bottom line. Perhaps I am wrong and we'll know more once a official word is given...but I seriously doubt it. There does need to be a standard set for cars like this though. Advanced ET is so broad spectrum and the rules that really need to be enforced are the majority of the alky rules. Advanced ET is a bracket class designation, these cars are 3 second capable with speeds over 180 mph, awesome cars no doubt. That being said some more protection needs to be mandated. I spoke of the safety issues with the team I was there with....well before any accident happened....kind of erie that something actually happened. I will say 100% that the cars weren't tech'd properly, this blame falls on the track/tech official. Several of the cars in competition had issues of which I don't know how they even received an ADV. ET tag on their chassis....surely no clue how they passed tech at the track. Also....the ARMCO guardrail is a known problem. I know the tracks can't all just rip it out and put up concrete walls per NHRA National Event specs. Perhaps groups like the "OFAA" will have to take this into account when booking races......don't count on NHRA rewriting a rule book to give you a standard of safety to go by....be vigilant and protect yourselves. It was such a cool event and I had a blast, I certainly hope there's no knee-jerk reaction that limits where you all can race....I hope to be at another event or two next season helping the car I was there with.

Until then...
Brandon Booher
NHRA TAD #35

 

Concrete Barriers

I have been trying to volunteer my services free of charge and found a concrete company to donate the concrete a little at a time for years to my local track. The managers are to worried about their political standing (run by a voted in association) to let me do it because a few years back I ran against them to be on the board ..... that is the biggest bunch of crap I've ever seen from a track.

 

If the chassis was "way outdated" and didn't have the proper updated equipment then I'd say it wasn't tech'd properly. In the video on YouTube you can see the car get up on the guardwall and come back down. That type of guardrail will cut tubing, belts, and anything that present itself+load on it. If the car was tech'd so extensively the belts wouldn't have let Mr. Hay out of the car and that's the bottom line. These events are booked in as a show, they aren't going to tell a car/guy it/he cannot compete. We know the rear end came out of the car, now was this a full floater rear? Judging from the pictures available, which are a plenty, it was not a full floater....also many of the other cars were without a floater rear as well. The floater rear is a rule, where's the tech process there? A concrete wall would have prevented him from going over, and simply bounced him to the other side of the track at the worse.

Steve L.

 

Getting the NTSB involved is the last thing we need. Someone crashes, the NTSB shut's down all dragracing untill they find the cause, and solution which usually takes them years. Would anyone want that?


I watched that video only once, and seen all I needed to see as far as an accident investigation goes. The armco guardrails need to be done away with, and all F/C's, and altereds should all eventually be built to the 10.5 sfi spec reguardless of e.t.

 

Ntsb?

I was in no manner suggesting the NTSB investigate drag racing accidents. I was only using them as an example of how accident investigations are done. The biggest point I wanted to make was-

The racing sanctioning bodies should do an investigation of some sort and their findings should be released to the racers so we can learn from these tragedies and prevent them from happening again Dave Germain

 

where is this wreck on youtube? have been there-can't find it.

 

It's been deleted

 

Yes,

The run has been deleted, and thanks to the poster for respecting candy's wishes! The only point that this post was to accomplish has been done. Its gone and thats what matters.

Thanks Travis for your help with that!

 

Investigations

One thing to keep in mind is that if an investigation is made there is a possiblity that the results might upset some people. Occasionally the NTSB results come right out and say "pilot error". I am not saying Tim did anything wrong. I don't know who did what or what went wrong in this incident but lets learn from it. If the facts piss somebody off but are true then we possibly prevented the next accident. The goal here is to learn the causes and prevent accidents. Not one of us wants to die in a accident but it is even more tragic if it could have been prevented. Dave Germain

 

Learning and Improving

My exact thoughts! NO ONE wants to see any more pain and suffering like the Hay family (God Bless every one of them) is going through right now. We must see past the emotions and grasp the reality of what has occurred, and exert whatever effort we must expend in finding the true cause (not bullshit conjecture or hunches!) and coming up with solutions to mitigate this risk in the future.

One thing stands out in nearly all the reasonable comments I've seen since this happened:

Chassis inspections are surely the number one indication from the posts I see. That should be on the crew's list at every event or before the car is ever loaded in the trailer. Pull the body and go over it, ALL of it. Every weld, and every place where the chassis is in contact with something else. Hand wire brush the paint off in the welds and PT (dye-penetrant test) them. It's cheap and easy to learn how to do. And it's an effective tool to find cracks and defects. It needs to be done more often as the chassis gets some age and runs on it. The higher the horsepower, the greater the frequency and extent of the inspection.

Even if the condition of the chassis proves NOT to be the cause or a major contributor to Tim's death (and we may never know, one way or the other), we still will all benefit from picking up this damned good habit. And that, in itself, will mean that Tim didn't die in vain, for someone will have benefitted from what we took away from this horrible tragedy.

Jim

 

I would have to agree with you there Jim.