Keep Auto Racing Out of Sight, So It’s Out of Mind

We appear here today as a friend of automobile racing. We have been a friend of automobile racing since 1964, when we discover it isn’t advisable to be an enemy of automobile racing.

In that year, a grisly accident occurs in the Indianapolis 500. Two drivers are burned to death. Others are hurt.

Through Vatican Radio, the Pope attacks auto racing, making a plea worldwide to stop the carnage. He is advised sharply by friends of caring that more people are killed going to church on Sunday than on motor tracks.

The Pope also is informed that bathtubs produce more fatalities than race cars.

One surveying the scene concludes unalterably: “If auto guys are willing to take on the Pope, they are too big for us.”

We have been a friend of racing since.

So, in advance of the Indy 500, a friend of auto racing, we recommend that those in charge of all motor events work toward keeping them off television.

That’s because we aren’t sure how much longer those watching auto mayhem on TV are going to remain peaceful. They aren’t friends of racing, as we are.

Recently, for instance, viewers are looking at an event coming from the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

A car driven by Chris Gehrke, only 25, is bumped. It spins. It is struck by a car driven by Carl Miskotten Jr. The collision is terrifying. Gehrke dies. Miskotten is racked up.

Next, viewers are exposed to a 20-car crash at Talladega in the Winston 500. Metal is crunching and flying. One guy’s leg is broken. Others are beaten up. The race is under the red flag for 33 minutes.

One says to oneself: “We are trying to save dolphins, whales, spotted owls, black rhinos, Bengal tigers and California condors. Do we give a damn about people?”

Several days later, on news at 5, 6, 7, 8:30, 9, 10 and 11, viewers are treated to footage of an accident as ghastly as one can envision. In an Indy practice run, a car driven by Mark Dismore hits a wall, whirls crazily into an inside fence, explodes into a bubble of fire. The car comes apart almost totally.

“Oh, my God,” the viewer gasps. “A man is inside that car, or what is left of it!”

Indeed, it is Dismore, victim of a broken neck and other injuries.

Blessedly, he lives, but the thought occurs to a friend of racing that if such holocausts continue on TV, the boat could start rocking.

Boycotts could be launched against products of companies bankrolling this entertainment.

Wasn’t a boycott threatened against the TV sponsor of Roseanne Barr, who butchered the national anthem? And wasn’t a boycott launched against the electric razors of Victor Kiam? The razors didn’t offend anyone. But players on a football team belonging to Kiam exposed themselves indecently before a female sportswriter in the locker room.

Never in motoring history has safety been dramatized as it is on our highways today. Car equipment is monitored. Driver education is demanded. Speed limits are reduced. Signs exhort us to watch for falling rocks, cattle and deer.

An oddsmaker of sorts writes us. He wants to list odds against seeing a deer where signs are posted. He feels the motorist is being misled. In some places, for instance, the oddsmaker would have you read: “Watch for deer--250-1.”

And, of course, at Yosemite it might be 9-2. Whether one would nibble on the short end here is one’s own business, but the point is, we are a society today sensitive to safety--motorists and deer alike.

So a friend of racing calls a meeting with other friends of racing, suggesting that if motor sports hope to continue, the principals should forget about TV and stage their events off-camera, like the old fights on a barge.

It used to be that the Indy 500 could be seen only in theaters. Researching the notorious race of ‘64, disrupted an hour 40 minutes by a disaster involving fire death and injury, we remember asking the closed circuit promoter what the audience did during the delay.

He answers: “The theaters did a record concessions business--doughnuts, hot dogs, ice cream, candy.”

It tended to prove that while racing fans didn’t necessarily come to see someone killed, such a catastrophe didn’t blunt their appetites.