Which is safer? Road circuit or Oval?

[nem]

The following is from a study made by the AP press of motor racing deaths in the US since 1990.

It includes all deaths, be it drivers, spectators, or crew.

It includes deaths related to crashes, heart attacks, and death from racing injury sustained at an early date, as much as several years earlier.

http://161.188.204.243/charlotte/rd/index.asp?F=tt

You can click on the headers for several different breakdowns of the data.

Note: Small oval is less than 1 mile. Big oval is 1 mile or longer.

[macdaddy]

Gidley might be the first to suggest that road courses may have obstacles that can be hit at undesirable angles. Servia might add to that something about the dangers of dirt or sand traps. But I'm not about to argue with Greg Moore, who would likely have pointed out the inevitable dangers of speed. Ask Andretti, he'll tell ya. Superspeedways are white-knucklers.

[Jay]

Yes, those statistics alone don't give a lot of information. The study obviously only included American series, and did not at all factor in the number of miles run on each type of track, the speeds of each track or the types of cars.

[nem]

Yes, US only, since 1990. They have added 7 since the Nov. 11, '01 publication of the article.

Race Type: http://161.188.204.243/charlotte/rd/index.asp?F=rt

Miles run by track type is problematic. If small oval and big oval are combined they would have many more miles than road racing as they out number road circuits, 3 to 1. Those miles are reflected in the stock car catagory leading the numbers.

Myself I was suprised by the numbers for drag racing, though there are a large number of those tracks also.

[KC]

These numbers are not a faor comparison either. There are thousands of small local dirt oval tracks in North America, and most of them are populated by drivers of questionable skill driving vehicles of questionable safety. By their very nature, dirt oval cars are cheap to race and it draws the type of racer who does not have the money to spend on extra safety features. In contrast our local road course racers have much nicer equipment than the dirt oval guys. The same goes for grassroots drag racing. Its relatively easy to build a 1500 horsepower street modified, but these will suually use the stock brakes on their 1/4 mile monster and this is where these guys have problems.

In the US, the ratio of drag and dirt racers to road course racers is probably 100 to 1. That drastically increases the odds of death due to higher levels of participation. Also consider that most oval and drag races sell beer. I know for a fact that beer has played a role in many a crash at either type of race.