I don't for a minute think that discussions about safety are being dismissed in regards to the Alvord Desert Crash.
About seven or ten (?) years ago on this site Ed and others were discussing trying to get permission to run on the Alvord Desert.
As a native Oregonian who has never been to the site I pulled out a map and later posted that the nearest city of any size (think Hospital, Airport, etc.) was Lakeview, Oregon about a hundred miles west and requiring driving into Nevada to reach. The Alvord desert is used by Hang Glider and Wind Sailor's along with others and has limited if any patrol by the BLM, State or County Police. I tried to convince Ed and others who posted what I saw as a disaster waiting to happen.
As I wrote in yesterday's post, Ed and crew, etc., were underfunded, and having already been stymied by the BLM in trying to run at Black Rock decided to proceed with "testing" at Alvord while trying to promote the venture and fund a dream.
I spoke with Ed several times over the past few years and never mentioned My concerns as He was such a nice, humble and positive person that believed He could achieve the "dream" that I wrote of in My previous post.
Ed had several friends with engineering background's and as the project proceeded many more joined on board or at least provided technical advice. I don't believe any of them took for granted that the end results of a high speed crash was survivable, and as Mike implied in a previous post... most likely isn't no matter what safety equipment is on board or built into the vehicle.
Considering the speed Jessie was traveling (using My finger calculations) of one hundred yards in one half of a second, I doubt She or anyone else could have seen any object, pulled any chute or fire extinguisher or even said "oh, Subaru" before She became a memory of what was. Take a look at the video taken from afar of the run.
Take a good look at the wreckage photo's and tell Me what can be learned from that rubble. I doubt that even a "black box" or telemetry to the pit's could clarify the explosive destruction of the vehicle.
The lessons learned? Read My previous post.
Whom to blame? Read My previous post.
As long as racer' race, accidents will occur, drivers will die, people will be devastated and questions will be unanswerable.
Bob Drury