My reaction to the Daytona 500 crash shows that I’m too numb to traffic violence

A special Amtrak train transports fans to the annual NASCAR race at Northern California's Sonoma Raceway. Track management cut this train in 2017. (Photo courtesy of Registry of Corvette Race Cars)

While I’m a big sports fan – I talk about my favorite teams, like the Cal Bears and Tijuana’s Xolos, all too often in my articles – I doubt anyone’s surprised to hear that car races don’t top my viewing priorities.

But on President's Day, my arrival to the Petworth neighborhood’s venerable DC Reynolds establishment (whose spicy chicken sandwiches and buy-one-get-one-free happy hours reflect the best of our city, but whose impending April closing its worst) coincided with the conclusion of NASCAR's marquee Daytona 500 race.

I’d come from Silver Spring’s Denizens Brewing on WMATA’s last limited-stop 79 bus of the evening and, though I wasn’t watching the TV closely, did know that the crowd’s adoration of our wall-loving, virus-eradicating president had failed to stop Florida’s rains from taking the cars off the track the previous day. The wet conditions that sidelined professional drivers didn’t shut the state’s deadly streets, however, so everyone had returned and the speedway appeared abuzz as the delayed automobiles neared the finish line.

Then, all of a sudden, the bar erupted as if a shortstop let a ground ball through their legs or a penalty kick had been called.

Sipping on my cold-fashioned, I looked up and saw pretty much the only part of a car race you’ll see on ESPN's highlight reels: a violent crash. As the drivers desperately jockeyed for position, a vehicle lost control, slammed into the trackside wall, went airborne, and emitted smoke and sparks.

Seconds later, the race was over, and ordinary-looking postgame coverage began. Standings scrolled across the screen. The winner celebrated by pumping his fist and driving in donuts, savoring a moment he’ll likely treasure for life.

The next shot, however, displayed something we may never see again at a NASCAR track: a scene that induced schadenfreude in an urbanist.

The cameras zoomed in on the totaled vehicle, which bore Koch Industries’ logo and was decked out in the company’s trademark blue. While the people of Nashville had succumbed to this petroleum-rich corporate empire, the asphalt of Daytona had proven too much for it.

I couldn’t resist. I pulled out my phone, snapped a picture of the TV, and shared a tweet emphasizing how much the scene summed up the self-inflicted state of U.S. mobility.

The evening then proceeded as usual for the patrons of DC Reynolds. People engaged in energetic, forgettable conversation. I filled my stomach on brussels sprouts and one of those aforementioned chicken sandwiches and soon enough was on the H2 bus back home, the crash nowhere in my thoughts.

The next day, during a routine, mindless scan of the online news, I saw a headline that shouldn’t have been surprising, but was: Ryan Newman, the driver of that ill-fated Koch-blue car, was hospitalized in serious condition.

Realizing the extent of my insensitivity the previous night, I immediately deleted the tweet. But I know this didn’t resolve the real issue – my, and all of our, normalization of traffic violence.

***

In pursuit of their Vision Zero quests, our leaders could actually learn a few lessons from NASCAR’s efforts to make their product safer. 

For example, the cars – in contrast to those on public roads – are equipped with speed-limiting technology, a measure taken after a massive 1987 crash at Talladega Superspeedway. Barriers protect the people in the stands from the chaos on the pavement. And media outlets typically call crashes that occur during races what they are – crashes – not “accidents.”   

   

But as Daytona made apparent, none of this really mitigates the simple danger of having so many machinated hunks of metal traveling in close proximity at high speeds – a fact that no technology, advertisement, or social perception can change.

The obvious solution is to get around using safer modes of mobility, and to minimize the extent to which people using those safer modes must interact with automobiles. But given that we haven’t done enough to make that solution happen – for example, NASCAR’s Sonoma, CA venue cancelled a special 2017 race-day train for fans due to “insurance issues,” while doing little to control cars either on or off the track – we do what we can internally to deal with this omnipresent threat to our existence. The ensuing normalization of violence has made the problem even harder to solve.

I may have thought I was conscious of – and perhaps even enlightened about – this cultural flaw, envisioning a transportation system that would make traffic violence a thing of the past. But my crash reaction at DC Reynolds reminded me that, after nearly 30 years living in American society, I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone.

How can I do better?