More injuries?

kids/young men, still have passed away in high school football. In all reality, nothing is safe these days and you could get hurt doing anything.
 
This true, you could die doing a crossword puzzle. Especially if your on a bus. Lots of bus crashes lately.

I guess from my experience, maybe I was lucky, I didn't seen major injuries on the field. Maybe a broken arm, wrist, finger, toe, tib-fib. The torn ACL was the major injury in football. I never saw shattered ankles, compound fractures (period), broken backs, blacked out combative riders. I cant ever remember hearing about Tommy needing a titanium rod put in his body ever in football. I have been running BC about as many years as I played football now, and there isn't a comparison between the two. I have seen way more carnage in this stage of my life. You can talk hypothetically all you want, but the reality of the squad running from a football game just isn't there. It has a lower occurrence rate.

Again anything can happen, and I'm not saying people don't get paralyzed or killed in football, but it just seems less likely to me having lived it.
 
I agree with JO. I've been coaching football for 6 years, and on our organization and leagues executive boards. The injuries don't compare. We have had a lot of concussions, sprains, couple broken arms, thumbs and fingers. Had one player go out this year with a spinal cord concussion. That is a first for me. He will be out 12 to 18 months for it to heel 100%.

We are part of USA football. We coach heads up tackling, and it is all about neck injuries. Coaches have training, and everyone is also trained in concussions. That is required. We also take the step on our board and have a director of coaching that takes coaches in our organization through further training.

Football is a contact sport with injuries, more so than any other ball sports, but they do not compare to motocross.
 
So in the spirit of discussion, this one is directed at the track owners on here like BC and Malvern since you guys are pretty active on here. Others feel free to chime in too. In your opinions, what about some type of formula for building tracks? A set of guidelines so to speak. I'm not saying every track has the same layout or anything like that. I'm talking about jump construction, length of run before a jump, distance between two jumps, etc. For example, if a jump face is 6' tall, it must also be raked out x amount of feet (simple rise over run formula) and must also have a distance of a' - b' of run before the face of that jump. This probably sounds more complicated than it really is because most track builders naturally build jumps properly, but some don't. Again, this might be stupid but just throwing it out there. It's kind of like the safer barrier in NASCAR that someone brought up earlier. It probably sounded dumb at one point until we found that it actually worked. I would be willing to bet that Dirt Wurx has a set of guidelines similar to this in SX. I realize that this would be nearly impossible to get everyone to follow and that there are a lot of variables such as elevation change, dirt, radius of a jump face, etc. I'm just asking your opinions, nothing more. So what do you think?
 
And one more thing to add, I would be more than happy to actually sit down lend my skills and opinions in discussing these things instead of just spinning tires on social media. This is a great avenue to get things started, but not for getting things done. This has been done before. If you do some research I think you will find that the SX series puts an emphasis on safety and so does the Masterpool family. They have developed a set of criteria for building safer tracks.
 
I was talking about this with some people the other day, almost everything I do is by eye. I will measure it afterward, maybe. I rarely build per plan so to speak. The one thing that I'm becoming more focused on is the distance from a turn to an obstacle. This distance seems to be design issue not in terms of whether an obstacle is dangerous, but if a rider goes down, will the next rider see the flag in time. Most still seem glued to the fender given a certain proximity from the turn to the jump.

Now if you went down this road, you would need survey equipment to as-built everything, then dump it into cad to check the angles.

Thing that is most concerning to me is how much variation I see in how the track changes just based on who is riding it. It can vary day to day, hour to hour. The talent of the rider group on it will change how fast it goes away, how rough it gets, where pot holes develop, faces will change. Its the four strokes.

Another thing most people don't consider is how much the weather effects jumps and turns. The jumps continuously slump lower and lower, and even just riding on them for a day, they change.

I think in the end, you can either build it or you cant. I don't know if a manual with exact formulas and angles will change that. Its all in the seat of the pants and the eye that is watching the dirt.
 
Skimming through this I only saw 1 mention of 1 thing.. flaggers. Some tracks do well with it, some..not so much. I have seen on several occasions people getting more hurt, or more people crashing due to a down rider, from a flagger not doing the 1 thing he/she is supposed to be doing, even at the tracks that do it well.

Lets not overlook the basics.

Thoughts on this - for practice days where there are no flaggers. what if tracks incorporated some type of saftey lights like in sx? Could have someone spectating with control of these things... at least have SOME control over the situation when there are no flaggers, pay 1 person to keep an eye on the overall track, rather than it be a free for all with little johnny laying on the backside of a jump and his across the track while everyones coming right at him.

I cant imagine it would be too expensive to set up a system like that?
 
JO, I agree with what you're saying. That's why I don't think it can ever be an exact science, as far as building jumps is concerned. However, I think it is possible to make simple guidelines that anyone with a tape and common sense can follow. I don't think it's practical at the local level to get real deep into this. I'm sure you know this better than most of us, but there are a lot of promoters out there that don't put much thought into their track. I think we (the riders) could benefit from something like this. For example, you are on to something there with your theory on giving the rider enough time to see a flagger. Those are important criteria that should be taken into account at every track. That is the kind of thinking that I believe we are all looking for. Motocross is dangerous, but that doesn't mean we can attempt to improve safety.
 
Alex with the AMA is currently working on a track manual, promoter manual something like what you are talking about. The basics. How many flaggers does a track require, placement, that kind of stuff. If you have a jump over 6' tall you need X amount of flaggers on it.

Crute - I have kicked that around for a number of years, one of the primary reasons I built the new deck and tower in the middle. Now we just need to find a effective red lighting system that doesn't require a lot of power. It would be super sweet if they were wireless technology.
 
KX514 said:
So in the spirit of discussion, this one is directed at the track owners on here like BC and Malvern since you guys are pretty active on here. Others feel free to chime in too. In your opinions, what about some type of formula for building tracks? A set of guidelines so to speak. I'm not saying every track has the same layout or anything like that. I'm talking about jump construction, length of run before a jump, distance between two jumps, etc. For example, if a jump face is 6' tall, it must also be raked out x amount of feet (simple rise over run formula) and must also have a distance of a' - b' of run before the face of that jump. This probably sounds more complicated than it really is because most track builders naturally build jumps properly, but some don't. Again, this might be stupid but just throwing it out there. It's kind of like the safer barrier in NASCAR that someone brought up earlier. It probably sounded dumb at one point until we found that it actually worked. I would be willing to bet that Dirt Wurx has a set of guidelines similar to this in SX. I realize that this would be nearly impossible to get everyone to follow and that there are a lot of variables such as elevation change, dirt, radius of a jump face, etc. I'm just asking your opinions, nothing more. So what do you think?
Click to expand...

Dirt wurx does.....

http://www.dirtwurx.com/track_tips.php

As for the football thing, I have had a few discussions with Mom about this one. After as much research from what I could find the injury incident rate is far greater in high school sports as a whole than MX. And the information was just off road grouped as a whole so that included the kids riding in fields with no helmets on too. Now Im sure the severity of injuries are worse in MX but the information I found didnt track that information.
 
BriarcliffMx said:
Crute - I have kicked that around for a number of years, one of the primary reasons I built the new deck and tower in the middle. Now we just need to find a effective red lighting system that doesn't require a lot of power. It would be super sweet if they were wireless technology.
Click to expand...

That technology exists, it might need to be adapted a bit for your application but it certainly can be done.
 
Well that is the next hurdle, how do you fool proof it to the point where someone doesn't throw the wrong (wrong jump) light on? Also, it would have to be quick, no time to go looking for the "Oh Sh!t, Someones Down App on your phone"

I guess I'm looking at it as a having one guy control 3-4 jump at a time.
 
How come in supercross the guys will buust out the jumps in one lap or no more than two?
Because all the jumps are built very similar.

First times at tracks we always compare the obstacles to what we know. Step up at Ironman...hit it a little faster than the Red Bud LaRoccos leap....
That new jump,... hit it at the same speed as the BC finish but not quite as fast. it will throw you like....this or that... example of course.

BUT jumps not built to print will be even more dangerous to someone making an assumption.

I am going back to I quit forever now........
 
BriarcliffMx said:
Well that is the next hurdle, how do you fool proof it to the point where someone doesn't throw the wrong (wrong jump) light on? Also, it would have to be quick, no time to go looking for the "Oh Sh!t, Someones Down App on your phone"

I guess I'm looking at it as a having one guy control 3-4 jump at a time.
Click to expand...

I can do that, what ever control you want. I can set it up so one remote control turns on one jump light, 2,3,4 or what ever. The remotes would have to be within 200' clear sight. You could have control of all of it on your phone too if you wanted from any distance.
 
screw it just turn them all on for practice day. someone is down, every caution light goes on. would it really be a huge deal to slow down for 15 seconds while someoen picks themself up? On race day you just use flaggers.

Im sure people would bitch about that, but I would assume that would take the time/guessing/panic out of hittiing the right controls and probably cut cost down on the setup as well. I guess you could have it go both ways, on race day a flagger would be responsible for their light and their flag (that might be too complicated for some though, lol)
 
I have been working on a project to incorporate flashing "caution" lights into track markers that would replace the Acerbis markers that have become so popular. LED lighting has become widespread and cheep over the past few years. The expense is the controller. Ideally you would want a wireless system and that would require each individual marker to have a receiver and solar power source. Controlling all the markers in one system would require a SUPERmulti tasker.

Items like that could help prevent injuries but it takes $$$ to develop and test ideas
 
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