[sperry]

Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey

Not to talk smack to you, Kevin, just to reinforce the point - I know at least a few of us here could successfully take roads we know flat out at 10/10ths, and probably get away with it 90% of the time... but it's the other 10% that will kill you. The other 10% holds the patch of water or black ice you don't see, or the deer that jumps out into the road (a real possibility, at least on a lot of the roads I've driven on in the bay area), or the smacktard driving the other way that drifts a little too close to your lane, or the kid playing in the road around the next sharp bend, etc. etc.. If you don't have some traction left in reserve for these emergencies, the results won't be pretty. I've driven in the hills at 10/10ths a few times in the past and, fortunately, gotten away with it... I don't do it anymore. Call it an increase in my intelligence/balls ratio.

I missed the "smack talk"... you guys just said the same thing?

And Segio, as far as Earnhardt's death... I'm not sure the point you're making. If you're saying that "you can get killed in a controlled environment, so why not risk it on the street" (which I dont' think is what you're saying), then you're wrong. Racing on a track is *far* safer than

If you look at the history of all the wrecks at Daytona, there are hundreds of cases of people walking away from much worse accidents. Dale's death is generally regarded as a "fluke" or "freak" incident. He didn't actually hit the wall that hard (the impact vector was approximately 35 mph IIRC). The problem was a seatbelt failure caused by Dale's insistance that he sit very low in the car in a reclined position. Even though he'd been warned that his seating position wasn't a safe as it could be, he refused to change. Much like his refusal to switch to a close-faced helmet. In the accident they found that the loose seat belt allowed him to rotate such that the back of his head hit the steering wheel, and since his helmet was open faced it rotated forwards, exposing the base of his skull. The impact there severed his spinal column at the base of the brain, killing him instantly (and thankfully for him painlessly). There were many links in the chain that led up to Dale's death... and it'd highly unlikely that anyone will ever die in a wreck that same way.

Meanwhile, on the street you hear the same story over and over about how some kid lost control into a street light, or crashed into cross traffic, or went over the double yellow into oncoming traffic. Since there's no sanctioning body or rules to street racing, no one learns from incidents or enforces rules... as they say, if you don't learn from history you're doomed to repeat it. The only way to learn from street racing is to learn it's too dangerous and give it up.