Thirty two year old Frenchman Franck Petricola died as the result of an accident at Sulby Crossroads this month, during the annual Isle of Man Time Trials. His death adds to the more than 200 that have occurred during the event since its inception in 1910. Petricola had also been involved in an earlier crash at a race in Ireland, which had left him in a coma for several days, but obviously not dead.
You know people use to say that spectators only go to the races in order to see someone crash. I will admit to there being a pulse-heightening moment when cars – or bikes – come together, but I don’t find seeing people get hurt enjoyable at all. I don’t think normal people do, and that’s why, over the years organizers have done almost everything they can, short of having every race category be filled with old diesel Chevettes, to make racing safer. Well, seemingly everywhere but the Isle of Man that is.
The annual competition on the Irish Sea isle has for decades been an uncompromising and unforgiving race on country lanes and shire roads so close to the quaint cobbled buildings that racers can literally touch them. Sometimes they hit them. That’s what make the Time Trials such a trial and that’s why today I want your opinion on whether or not this is in fact the most dangerous motor race on the planet. What do you think, is the Isle of Man TT the word’s most savage race?
Image: YouTube
Hooniverse Asks: Is the Isle of Man TT the World's Most Dangerous Race?
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Yes, I think so.
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MosDef.
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The Rat Race is deadlier, and the Human Race even more so.
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Regarding the latter, no one gets out alive.
https://media.giphy.com/media/xQDjOVmYhRGms/giphy.gif -
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Yeah, so?
The Isle of man is one of the last places in the first world where men are still allowed to do brave and foolish things at their own peril. Shouldn’t a man be allowed to test himself as he chooses?
As a society we have become obsessive with preventing every possible imagined hazard. An example is the banning of slides and monkey bars in playgrounds. Studies now show that the ‘dangers’ of such types of play are important developmentally for children. Tiny risks build confidence for later life. Japan, culturally, has a huge problem nowadays with lack of masculinity – men don’t date and don’t marry. There is a complaint that the current male generation is full of ‘ yasai-taberu-dobutsu (vegetable-eating-animal) and that all the nikku-taberu-dobutsu (meat-eating-animal) men are extinct.
Edit: Just to show that I’m not making up monkey bar monkeyshine
http://jjie.org/onward-summit-of-monkey-bars/-
They let women race the TT, too, you know.
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Your attempt to insert political correctness into the discussion is exactly the attitude I am railing against. Real men have always let the girls run with them. Just let people do what they want without lectures, OK?
http://www.fia.com/women-through-decades-
Open forum, macho man. Don’t tell me what to write.
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It’s probably the one that is the most complacent to the danger. That may be overstating it as I think they do genuinely care for their athletes, but they embrace the element of danger as part fo their race more than any other series i can think of.
Baja and Dakar have made strides in making the races if not safer at least more survivable. That is with the advent of GPS and other technologies that alert teams to their drivers’ distress rather than relying on other drivers to spot and radio back, or realize they never arrived and having to comb a desert to find the lost driver.
IoMTT is raw, and that’s the allure for the rider, spectators and the entire series. If they made it less treacherous I’m sure more than a few would never pay attention to it anymore.
Look what happened to Indy after they mandated a drop in speeds for the increase of driver safety (as well as poor management and a petulant schism that essentially killed open-wheel racing in the US.)-
At 1.9 per year, Dakar comes close to the TT which averages just over 2 per year. Of course thats official figures. Who knows whats real, among the wreckage left behind for families to clean up.
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True, but look at it from a death per mile standpoint. The TT is a slaughterhouse by racing standards.
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I dunno. The Irish superbike races have all the public road lunacy, with the added entertainment of a mass start.
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Absolutely, was just going to point this out, the North West 200 makes the TT look sane, it’s a proper all out race, where the TT is run on a time trial format.
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I think this video of Tony Pond’s 1990 lap of Isle of Man really highlights how dangerous it is. 102 mph average speed in roads with very narrow margin of error. Now imagine doing that at higher speed with half the wheels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NEskpWsMkI -
I thought TT stood for Tourist Trophy, not Time Trial?
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You are correct, it does stand for Tourist Trophy, not Time Trial, (although that is the format of the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy).
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Despite the level of danger, there’s something satisfying about IoMTT’s increasing anachronism. The machines get faster, riding gear more effective, but the course setting – and its lethal potential – never changes to reflect anything but another passing year on the Isle. On Man. (I have no clue to how it’s casually referred)
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