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now for some data

Posted By: Chuck Bower
Date: Sunday, 26 June 2011, at 12:06 a.m.

In Response To: auto racing analogy (part II) (Chuck Bower)

I did a simple statistical study of the following:

1) I looked at every driver who started the Indy 500 from 1911 (inaugural year) until 1990.

2) I checked whether that driver died while driving a racecar (could be in an actual race, during qualifying, or during practice or testing) at ANY racetrack anywhere in the world. I did include deaths that happened later (with ~1 month) from injuries that occurred in a racecar.

Here are the (death) tallies by decade [year ending the decade], i.e. by the year the driver was killed racing:

1920(16), 1930(14), 1940(26), 1950(12), 1960(33), 1970(18), 1980(5), 1990(4).

Note that WWII (during the decade ending 1950) put a (near) halt to auto racing in the US, including Indy. (The race was not run during the four years 1942-45.) There also was no Indy500 in 1918 and 1919 for similar reasons. I don't think you can simply proportion by year, though, so those decades' deficits compared to the previous and following decades is only partially-quantitatively explained at present.

There are other issues at work here. As the modern day was approached, the amount of racing by the top drivers became less. It (of course) has to do with $ -- drivers make more in the major series so they don't need to participate on their "off" days and weeks in lower regarded series races. Likely in the early decades there were simply fewer races, PLUS most drivers had non-racing day jobs so they couldn't race as much. (And travel was surely more difficult.)

I chose not to tally the most recent two full decades for the simple reason that many of those starters are still active in racing, i.e. they haven't died while driving a racecar YET.

I could have just looked at deaths related to the INDY 500 itself, but that would be a much smaller (and thus more stochastic) sample (about 40 in 100 years).

A couple deaths from the 80's I didn't include were Mike Mosley's (he died in an offroad vehicle but I believe it was a recreational ride, with his son, and not related to racing) and Sammy Sessions's death in Michigan winter racing a snowmobile. You can of course add those two into the 1990 total but I don't think it will have a big effect on the result.

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