BROOKLYN, Mich. — After watching rain wipe out the races for two Sundays in a row, drivers will have to contend with a different weather element in scorching heat Sunday at Michigan International Speedway.
"It's going to be a battle inside the car," Kurt Busch said. "You just hope that you're hydrated enough and that you can keep as much heat out of the car as you can. Mentally, you just have to suck it up and concentrate on driving the race car and not worrying about how hot you are."
Sunday's forecast is for temperatures in the high 20s C, with only a slight possibility of scattered afternoon thunderstorms. The heat won't be fun, but drivers will anything over yet another rained-out race.
Jimmie Johnson called for earlier start times to races, perhaps allowing more time to get races in even when rain postpones the action on a Sunday.
"I think we need to start the races early enough so that you can have a rain shower, you can get the track dryers out to dry the track and go back racing and have a chance to complete the event," Johnson said. "I was thinking the same thing when I was sitting in my bus (last Sunday) knowing we were going to go to our second Monday race."
Johnson understands the argument for starting races late enough to target fans on the West Coast - he's from California - but he'd rather have a better chance at racing Sundays instead of Mondays.
"It's great to target the perfect time zone, the perfect viewing audience, and I understand those factors given a perfect situation," Johnson said. "But when you race as often as we do and all around the country and weather being an issue, I guess my point of view is from living it ... week to week. We should have raced on Sunday and been home on Monday."
TESTING, TESTING: NASCAR president Mike Helton said officials are close to a decision on the sport's testing policy for next season. NASCAR banned all testing at racetracks where it sanctions events this season, a move intended to cut costs for teams.
"Right now, the question is, 'Why do anything different right now?"' Helton said. "And again, I go back to the fact that suspending testing was an economic issue more than anything, and the input that we get from the team owners and the crew chiefs has a lot to weigh in on what we would do if we do anything different."
Helton also said officials from NASCAR and track ownership group International Speedway Corp. are looking at potential safety changes at Watkins Glen after Sam Hornish Jr.'s multicar accident there Monday.
Source
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Michigan Attorney says Time to Put the Brakes on Dangerous Trucks
Michigan Attorney Steve Gursten has reached his breaking point with bad truckers. With years of experience representing people injured or killed by dangerous trucks and truckers in truck accidents and a former president of the Truck Litigation Committee for the American Association of Justice (AAJ), Gursten says he is frankly “disgusted” with what he sees.“We keep seeing the same kinds of cases over and over: trucks with safety violations, unfit drivers who have had licenses revoked several times or even kill people and they are still on the road,” Gursten says. “And I am tired of seeing preventable tragedies.”
Gursten recently represented the family of a man who was killed on a Michigan highway after a truck with a cracked steering column, bad brakes and bald tires had a blowout and knocked the man’s car into a median. “The car smashed into the median and a husband and father of two little girls was burned alive because of a truck that never should have been on the road,” says Gursten, his voice tinged with anger and frustration at the situation.
The lack of safety in the trucking industry is a “national public safety crisis” according to Gursten and he has the facts to back him up.
According to a new analysis of information gathered by the AAJ from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), as many as 4000 Americans a year are killed in collisions with trucks that have incurred thousands of safety violations, such as defective brakes, bad tires or loads that dangerously exceed weight limits. Many of the truck drivers involved have little or no training and many others have a history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Gursten recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application for his home state of Michigan. Gursten says the documents revealed more startling information about an industry that continues to recklessly roam American roads.
“There are 1,072 trucks just in Michigan that have less than satisfactory ratings according to the federal government,” says Gursten, "and about one in four is dangerously out-of-service according to road side checks.”
Gursten is a recognized leader in personal injury litigation against truckers and the trucking industry and probably handles more trucking cases than any other attorney in the state of Michigan. His firm has at least 50 cases going through the courts right now.
As Gursten sizes up the situation, financial troubles in both the trucking industry and state agencies are making an already dangerous situation even worse. “You have trucking companies cutting back on safety because money is tight and at the exact same time you have less regulatory authority from state agencies because governments have no money,” he says.
Even more troubling to Gursten is Michigan law that prevents courts from awarding punitive damages in personal injury and wrongful death suits against trucking companies--a situation he believes allows trucking companies to take chances they wouldn’t take in other states.
“What I have found is many of the truckers come to Michigan because they are so dangerous that they can’t get jobs in other states where they punish companies for hiring unfit drivers,” says Gursten. “The companies know they will never be held accountable here and or have to pay punitive damages. They know the worst that will happen is that the insurance company will pay for the accident.”
Source
Gursten recently represented the family of a man who was killed on a Michigan highway after a truck with a cracked steering column, bad brakes and bald tires had a blowout and knocked the man’s car into a median. “The car smashed into the median and a husband and father of two little girls was burned alive because of a truck that never should have been on the road,” says Gursten, his voice tinged with anger and frustration at the situation.
The lack of safety in the trucking industry is a “national public safety crisis” according to Gursten and he has the facts to back him up.
According to a new analysis of information gathered by the AAJ from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), as many as 4000 Americans a year are killed in collisions with trucks that have incurred thousands of safety violations, such as defective brakes, bad tires or loads that dangerously exceed weight limits. Many of the truck drivers involved have little or no training and many others have a history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Gursten recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application for his home state of Michigan. Gursten says the documents revealed more startling information about an industry that continues to recklessly roam American roads.
“There are 1,072 trucks just in Michigan that have less than satisfactory ratings according to the federal government,” says Gursten, "and about one in four is dangerously out-of-service according to road side checks.”
Gursten is a recognized leader in personal injury litigation against truckers and the trucking industry and probably handles more trucking cases than any other attorney in the state of Michigan. His firm has at least 50 cases going through the courts right now.
As Gursten sizes up the situation, financial troubles in both the trucking industry and state agencies are making an already dangerous situation even worse. “You have trucking companies cutting back on safety because money is tight and at the exact same time you have less regulatory authority from state agencies because governments have no money,” he says.
Even more troubling to Gursten is Michigan law that prevents courts from awarding punitive damages in personal injury and wrongful death suits against trucking companies--a situation he believes allows trucking companies to take chances they wouldn’t take in other states.
“What I have found is many of the truckers come to Michigan because they are so dangerous that they can’t get jobs in other states where they punish companies for hiring unfit drivers,” says Gursten. “The companies know they will never be held accountable here and or have to pay punitive damages. They know the worst that will happen is that the insurance company will pay for the accident.”
Source
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)