Saw my first ever autocross accident today...

I was at the Oregon Region Porsche Club Auto-X today and saw my first ever accident during an event. A fox-body Mustang 'Vert showed up with a ton of mods (built motor, centrifugal blower, rollbar, faux chrome Cobra R's, etc) with really nice paint. He overcooked it in the first slalom of the first run and slammed straight into a guardrail.

The car was drivable but it was an expensive hit! He wadded up the hood, bumper, grill, lights, and fender plus did about $1,000 of damage to the track. Nobody hurt and we finished the event. The Mustang driver even made a few more runs albeit at a much slower pace.

It was kind of sad and I hope he fixes it and comes back. Nice older man with his whole family watching.

OUCH... Glad he was ok

I've only ever even heard of one other autocross accident and it involved a fence and minor damages

Any pictures? I haven't seen one but one that got close (although I don't know how the driver even got the car to fly that far off the track in that direction)

On courses I've seen it would be hard to actually hit... well, anything

Years ago I saw an Austin Healy I believe it was with a hot Datsun motor on twin carbs overcook it,and push a jersey barrier about 20 feet out into a road adjacent to the auto-x course. Man did he stuff it hard. I think I heard he got his foot stuck on the accelerator while heel-toeing,and just carried way to much speed into this hairpin at the end of the course. From then on they changed the course to slow people down coming into that turn.

Funny thing is the 60,or so people there thought we could push the barrier back into place. Yeah right that thing just laughed at us. It took a International pickup to move it,and even that was working. What were we thinking?

Well its good that it wasnt anything worse. It seems sometimes people autocross really fast cars when they would be better off driving a slower one though.

Seen a few. 1st someone overcorrected and overcorrected again and again and shot off about 50 yards into a ditch. Another one, a tight course and a hopped-up 302 fox-body was playing driftking around every corner and spinning tires the length of the short straights (basically showing off) and drifted and spun into a lightpole. Popped the hatch and someother tweaking. The last one was a vintage racer spitfire overcooked a slaloom into the grass. Caught a hole and flipped it onto the rollbar (good thing it had one). That's over 4 years of autox. No one hurt in any of them.

Saw a restored E-type catch a lamppost right between the headlights last year.

I still have a paint chip on my desk from that incident. Closest I'll ever come to owning a XKE

Shawn

So basicly dont auto x with a fox body?

I was looking over my car at a event last year when I hear someone yell "HOLY SH**!!" I look up at the course and see a mazda 3 five feet into the air doing a gigantic end-over-end tumble; caused by stock suspension, giant r.anti roll bar and big r compounds...

Car was totalled, driver walked away with a small cut on his arm.

I have heard of quite a few accidents actualy, around here 2 cars got totaled becasue there was an intersection in the course and the second car started too close to the first one. Other ones i have seen online, like the borrowed porsche hitting a row or spectators cars, etc. Someone my dad knew got their arm broken when it got stuck between their fiat 850 spider and the ground when they rolled it (many years ago)

Locally a long term track stopped allowing autocrosses after the second accident in 2 years.

The last one involved a jammed throttle, car drove off into 2 parked company carsand a staff car from the host company.

At our track day on Wednesday, two Lancer Evo's bought the tire wall at the same place. A hill, as they crested it, the back ends got light, they spun and went into the tire wall. I'd say the each did 5 large worth of damage, at least. Neither was hurt. One ripped the rest of the bumper off and continued on next session. I told him it would buff out.

I remember seeing a 3 series with an LSX motor run up on a curb, tearing up all the front suspension.

Joey

I've seen a Vette flip, several slam their cars into light poles or other parked vehicles. Multiple blown engines. Cars careening through the crowds even (without injury, remarkably enough).

Autocrossing can be quite exciting at times.

Never seen a fire at an autocross though, come to think of it.

foxtrapper wrote: Never seen a fire at an autocross though, come to think of it.

We had a guy bring his track Jetta and had an electrical short under the dash. Smoke but no fire.

There has been a minor incident this year and last year at our local independent club's events. They don't have the best safety record, unfortunately, but they are stuck with tight sites.

Last year a kid, maybe 17 or 18, was there with his father. The kid was driving his DD Maxima, which was a mid-'90s 5-speed model and looked pretty stock. He got crossed up on some gravel, either confused gas/brake or just didn't let up when he should have, and nailed a curb at about a 45 deg angle. Bounced up and would have gotten away with RF suspension damage except his last bit of momentum carried him into a concrete light standard and blew the airbags.

At the first event this year a guy overcooked a short slalom in a near-stock NA Miata and spun it backwards up onto a projecting curb. That one was a bit scary because it was a worker station and several of them were sitting down on the curb (like they should NOT have been doing). Nobody hurt and surprisingly enough the Miata took it like a champ, though his competition day was done, he drove it home and it didn't look bad.

seen a Celica driven by someone who should have known better completely miss the first turn in the course and nail a 240sx as it was exiting the course. Both cars went home on trailers, the Celica looked done. The 240 might have buffed out, dunno.

Also saw a front wheel fall off an Integra, wrong combination of stud/wheel/lugs. Drove home, IIRC, but needed a new front fender.

Still, very little total damage for all the runs I've seen on an autocross course.

I JUST missed an event at Ripken Stadium a few years back when a guy in an Evo went out of control and smashed into a porta-potty. With someone inside. It flew like 5 feet into the air from what I heard. The kid in the porta-potty was OK I think. Probably covered in poo and blue liquid though.

Actually, at that same venue, a Corvette hit a curb sideways and flipped down into a ditch. The driver was OK. I missed that one too.

peter wrote: Also saw a front wheel fall off an Integra, wrong combination of stud/wheel/lugs. Drove home, IIRC, but needed a new front fender.

I think a guy in a Subaru lost all four wheels at the same time with my local auto-x club a few years back. The car just sat there resting on its frame. Same deal I think with the wrong lugnuts or wheel studs. Everything just gave out on the launch.

I didn't see it, but at an event in the SE a couple of years ago, some poor guy with a gorgeous Mazda FD RX7 lost all four wheels like the Subie confuZion3 described. Turned out someone had sold him standard lug nuts instead of metric. Pitch was so close that they'd torque down, but wouldn't stay there.

I do have pictures. I did actually witness the entire run. Being familiar with fox-chassis cars I actually took a really good look at his before the run. It had stock suspension (so no panhard bar or watt's link), drilled rotors (4-wheel disc 4-lug swap, probably from a 87/88 Turbo Coupe), and the rollbar was an NHRA legal 4-pointer.

The course was safe (I was in a 400HP GTO on KDW2's and never felt in danger), it was 100% driver error. As he exited the slalom the car did the patented fox-chassis snap-oversteer as the solid rear axle re-set itself, he caught it and started snapping back. When it came back around instead of taking it easy he nailed the throttle, made boost, and the car snapped again and went into the guardrail separating the access road to the course (which is PIR's Pro Pits).

If you take a look at the overhead views:

Middle Picture

You can see the drag staging lanes (curved lines on the right). He was going from right to left and hit the guardrail on the bottom. I'll post pics when I get a chance to download/upload them.

I'm never going Autocrossing again!

Screw that man! I've been to ~30 autocross events with an average of 75 cars at each one getting an average of 4-5 runs, with exactly one wreck. In the same amount of drag racing there's a good 4-5 wrecks. Hell, I saw a wreck on my first HPDE!

I think autocrossing is about the safest motorsport there is, for the driver and the car. Stuff just doesn't break like it does drag racing or hot lapping.

carguy123 wrote: I've only ever even heard of one other autocross accident and it involved a fence and minor damages

hell, am I THAT famous?

gotta love it, after getting my best performance to date (5th in pax out of 103!) I still get a comment "glad you gave up on fencing and concentrated on racing"

ah well, it was years ago and i have learned a good bit since then. (I was not the only person who was in that ditch that weekend, I am just the one who slid in a bit faster, the course is designed differently now as a result of lessons learned that day by all)

I'll own up and admit that there was driver error and I tried to save it when it was too far gone on a highspeed turn (after lifting) I had only been autocrossing long enough to get the guts to drive hard and hadent smoothed it out that well yet. at the same time, a zo6 also went into the ditch hard enough to knock tires off their bead, we dont make that a high speed turn with the ditch on the outside anymore.