My fondest memory of the Lowndes / Calder incident was Larry Perkins talking about the wonderful opportunity it presented for him to study HRT chassis engineering! Larry to a tee!

One thing John didn’t mention is the problem as having the parked cars possibly in the way of the emergency vehicles.

As a flaggie, I’ve attended a few incidents and have learnt basically to ‘hold the fort’ until people like John arrive - which doesn’t take long at all.

We were talking about the costs involved at a meet today - particularly with the spiralling cost of fuel. A couple of ideas were for the a couple of dollars from the team entry fee to go into a fund to help subsidise equipment costs, and another for expenses incurred in volunteer work to be a tax claim in the same way as expenses incurred while doing paid work.

As admirable as the actions of drivers stopping to help looks, in practice it is a huge hindrance.
For a start, as good as the drivers are, they have little or no rescue training.
Second, they arrive at an incident full of adrenaline, and not thinking calmly.
Thirdly, they wear helmets, which hurts when you get headbutted by one, and they don’y carry a fire extinguisher.
As much as you think that it is a good thing, as a rescue professional, sometimes we have to tell the drivers to fire truck off and let us do our job.
Even as volunteers, we are willing to risk our life to save a stranger, and if the V8 drivers really want to help there is one thing we need.
We pay for all of our own safety gear, so a couple of dollars, or a team shirt for us to auction on eBay is better than 10 drivers stopping to lend a hand.

With Paul’s roll at Puke, Brad was getting out, and it took him a long time to get out. The marshalls and fire marshalls were there before he got out. So, I think some would still stop, but it would take a while for them to get out.