Lightning Sadly Strikes Twice
Hopefully Felipe Massa will be OK after his freak accident, whilst qualifying on Saturday, but tragically Henry Surtees was not so lucky. Both were hit with bits of other cars, that happened to be bouncing on the track.
Motor racing is dangerous, but so are other sports, like horse riding and rugby, although motor racing has just had a bad week. But what is interesting is that the authorities are probing the reasons for the accidents and that some of the ideas they incorporate eventually filter down to our daily life.
But as a statistician, I can’t help feeling that both accidents were against odds of thousands to one.
After all on Sunday in Hungary, Alonso’s Renault lost a wheel and it bounced harmlessly down the track, before coming to rest by a crash barrier. But that was totally avoidable, as the mechanics had not put the wheel on correctly.
It also has lessons for us all, in that how many of us check all the wheels before we take our car on the road?
Sometimes I do, but on my last trip to Holland, I found on return that I had a damaged tyre, which probably should have been changed before I left. A failure would have been supremely annoying, as my Jaguar does not have a proper spare wheel! And do you know how to change a wheel on your car?
So although the tragic events on the race track of last week, were very sad and my heart goes out to everyone involved, do we take those simple precautions that would make us all safer on the roads, at work and especially in the home?
I doubt it!
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The Anonymous Widower 
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