Tony Stewart hits and kills fellow racer

What does any of that have to do with this thread of TS? Absolutely nothing. Your just spewing and spewing comments that are not related to the incident at hand.
How are you so blinded by your own rage towards motorsports? Every comment has been negative and have no actual facts backing it up.
If your goal is to just trash motor racing in general, you should start a thread entirely devoted to your hatred of auto racing and race car drivers.
Is it because you were not able to become one? Or did someone once deny you the opportunity to be one?
You obviously have no passion for racing, your only passion is to try and make people see your very lopsided argument. That autoracing is evil.

ASJ post
"Things are so bad in organized motor sport, sanctioning bodies now perform 24/7-365 intelligence upon their drivers. Motor sport insiders now freely petition their sanctioning bodies, to revoke press credentials of reporters, for asking questions they don't particularly like." - No pass credential are being revoked. This is not the white house we are talking about here. It's auto racing. Free press in this country is great. And with the numerous amount of bloggers at these races, chances are you will not miss a thing that happen on or off the track.

You take conspiracy theories to an entirely new level. I still have to wonder why you have animosity TS, regardless of his incident with Ward, you just seem like you hate him and everyone involved in racing.

 

Greatest PR stunt in the history of organized motor sport: The IRL's infamous Dan Wheldon fuel burn -

-- e.g., Las Vegas, 2011. arguably the slickest impromptu PR stunt of all time, the IRL's infamous Dan Wheldon fuel-burn proved sufficient in mollifying Nevada locals in time, for the IRL 5 (e.g., Randy Bernard; Brian Barnhart; Michael Andretti; Roger Penske; Chip Ganassi) to flee accountability, make a b-line for the state line, out of Nevada that night, safe into hiding.

Sorriest PR stunt in the history of organized motorsport: NASCAR's "Stand Up for Smoke!" fan participation exhibition -

-- e.g., lap 14; Bristol; 2014.08. brazen; inflammatory; when organized motor sport would be wise to be impartial, reach beyond to bridge the gulf, pacify opposing viewpoints toasting Kevin Ward with a thoughtful tribute, NASCAR's lap 14 "Stand Up for Smoke" PR stunt only further underlines their biased nature, strengthens the resolve of NASCAR critics, fuels the fire of opposing viewpoints and those critical of organized motor sport, while serving as an egregious insult; a rude, sobering slap in the face for every one of Kevin Ward's surviving family, friends and loved ones -- asj.

 

come on, just because he doesn't speak out in the media, doesn't mean he is in hiding. Or do you really believe he spends his time not at his house but at an undisclosed location, even though there is no sign of any criminal charge against him?

By the way, driver fatalities are seldom criminaly investigated. You have probably missed it, but these type of tragedies are, how unfortunate that me be, still part of the sport. I believe the fatalities at the 1957 Mille Miglia, Ronnie Petersons death at Monza in 1978 and Senna's death in Imola had some sort of legal consequence (but I believe even in those instances no one was send to jail). And why would they? Accidents happen and when a fatality is not the consequence of an accident, than laws must be enforced. But that is almost never the case.

 

A typical lawyer's advice to a new client? "Stop talking". Just the way the legal system operates. Whether OJ, Tyson, TS, or Joe Blow.

Just wish ASJ would take that route!

 

Oh, c'mon.

According to ASJ, we are talking about (for those who might have missed this gem) "...organized motor sport, where a driver is free to satiate himself, deliberately running down pit workers, corner marshals, spectators, helpless pedestrians, but for no good reason than to quench his blood-lust".

The best way to deal with a troll is to ignore him.

 

I disagree. The chain of causality has to be broken somewhere, and, for torts, it is at proximate cause. It will be for a trier of fact (judge or jury), if it goes that far, to determine how far to extend that proximity. Was this incident in the moment? The last lap? Or further back in time?

Yes, TS is innocent until proven guilty. Which is why I don't think a criminal conviction is likely, without more, due to the higher burden on the State in that case. Um, I'm not being fooled. If anything, I think people who have concluded that TS is in the clear have deluded themselves.

However, I'm not so sure what will happen given the lower burden for civil cases. I think the brush-back-gone-wrong scenario is VERY believable. Could there even have been something more simmering over from past encounters? It's certainly possible. And, TS' own conduct throughout his career will be on display, as an example of his temper. Finally, this happened under a caution, which heightens the duty, IMO, as it is a special condition, purposefully thrown to prevent accidents with persons who (or debris that) may be on-track. I think a plaintiff's counsel will have a field day with this.

I'm not saying this is how it's going to play out, but unless there's more evidence to suggest TS intended to brush Ward back, there's likely no criminal case. And, unless there's more evidence exculpating TS, there's a very credible wrongful death suit.

And, no one really seemed to take me up on the hypothetical I tossed out (which is fine). The only one who did got it wrong. In the law, TS would be liable for killing Ward with an airplane on the way down. I see the argument that "it's moot, the second Ward jumped off the building, he was dead. What happened after that was irrelevant and couldn't change the outcome." However, in the law, technically TS harmed Ward. It may go to other factors such as the percentage of culpability and any pay-out, however. In NY, it will matter due to the apportioning scheme.

CW

 

People at Williams(including Newey) were convicted of manslaughter by the "Italian Justice System", they just had left the country before trial, and never came back. The Italian justice system is special - its all about saving face rather than actual justice. If you are a local judge, and you can convict someone who is outside your local for a crime so it isn't "your locations fault" - you do it! Rather than any blame falling on an Italian, the justice system came down hard on foreigners.

Fortunately for those who live in Italy - you can appeal to a higher court several times, so if you live in town A, get convicted in town B, you can appeal higher, now you're in you're own area, and get acquitted. If you bring dishonor to Italy - you're toasted toasted toasted in their court system regardless of guilt or innocence.

local Judges in Italy have convicted scientists of manslaughter for not predicting exactly when an earthquake would happen. Crazy.

 

Actually - an airplane flying below a populated structure is in deep deep doo doo just for the flyby. It takes special licencing and permits for low flight over populations, often with specific routes and minimum altitudes that have to be followed. The pilot would be deep fried by the FAA even were he to miss the person.

Under caution, all a defense has to do is pull up a plethora of contact after the yellow has been thrown. I've already linked to a vid at a dirt track in Concord NC with yellow lights around the track that clearly shows the yellow is out, as cars slide sideways and collide. The short time frame from when a yellow is thrown, until the collision, would not make Tony as culpable as if it had happened several minutes later. The nature of a yellow in sprint car racing with green lap times of 10-20 seconds. A defender could lower how important it was that they were under caution by illustrating many incidents like this. Also, a yellow, in cars with no gear's or starters, means the car's are still zippin' pretty hard through the corners, especially if they are near the bottom of the track.

A defense could also counter showing where on the track the other car's safely passed Ward, and show where on the track Tony's car was. This would show that Tony's path was either reasonable for the caution - the others made it safely through - or that his path was unreasonable relative to the other cars.

 

Am I to be taking this seriously?

As to the rest of your post, it's for a trier of fact to consider the defense's arguments.

CW

 

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/dca/local_more/media/LowFly.pdf

Flying below a building is a mega mega no no. You are deep deep deep doo doo for doing it unless you have special permits, licencing, and arrangements in place prior. Air show pilots all have designated altitudes for certain areas, and have to be certified for anything they do below a certain altitude. I was an aviation nut as a kid.

Yup, just posting a counter fact that would be brought up.

 

What none of us mentioned is the emotional damage TS must feel over this. Assuming from the evidence we've seen, TS was under a yellow caution he's been under many times before. However this time something went tragic and now that burden will be on his conscious his entire life. As I'm sure that would effect most of his here deeply too.
Now because of a young mans poor decision to exit his race car, that burden must be carried on TS's shoulders. That's probably adding to the fact that he is so quite.
What could you say when your emotional destroyed over something?
I wouldn't even want to imagine what that would be like.


I'm sure by someone's thought process here, no name shall be mentioned, that TS is in a warehouse plotting his next victim on the track. Madmax thunder dome 500 up next.
NASCAR is going to just add guns to the cars to make it easier on the drivers to take each other out.

 

I don't think that CW was suggesting that an airplane was actually going to hit someone jumping off a building. The fanciful scenario was created as an example of culpability in the legal system.

Sort of like me saying "It's the pot calling the kettle black", and you then pointing out that pots don't actually talk.

 

I don't disagree, but it's also outside of the hypothetical's boundaries. Which is why I was asking.

CW

 

Yes, thanks.

This is a HIGHLY unlikely real-world scenario and only serves to illustrate how the law looks at it.

CW

 

So if a pedestrian runs into the middle of a crowded divided highway with traffic moving 70mph and gets hit, it's the driver's fault in the eyes of the law?

 

No - not automatically. Just that it can be.

 

First, you can't talk in absolutes. NY isn't a 100% or nothing state. In your hypothetical, a driver could be apportioned some blame based on a number of factors (were they paying attention or fiddling with the radio, talking on their cellphone, texting or yelling at their kids in the back seat?). They might have been able to avoid hitting the pedestrian, but didn't due to their own conduct. If that's the case, they would certainly be apportioned some blame.

Second, your hypothetical differs in a number of ways from what happened.

CW

 

Exactly.

CW

 

How is my hypothetical different than your plane hypothetical where the plane is at fault?

 

My understanding is that in the latter case the guy is pretty much already dead - He's certainly heading that way at least. That a hypothetical plane does the job first changes things though. Surprised me TBH!

Cheers,
Ian

 

I wasn't comparing the two. Rather, I was comparing your hypothetical to the actual incident.

Regardless, the hypotheticals are similar in ways. Same basic issue.

CW

 

Yes. No matter how remote the possibility, there is still the chance that, but for the collision with the plane, the jumper could have survived.

End result may be the same, but it's an important distinction. Especially under an apportionment regime.

CW

 

Well, then for both instances unless the pilot or the driver on the highway did something prove-able that they should not have (ie distracted, didn't try to miss if they had a chance etc.), they would not be culpable. In the TS case, we so far have zero evidence that he did something he should not have or didn't do something he should have, other than wild conjecture. In fact, the evidence we have so far shows he tried to swerve and was in the same line with the car ahead of him, so was not doing something he shouldn't have.

 

Sorry for the delay in responding. I did watch this video and it seems like drivers avoid being in Ward's position, but the few times they get close you don't see the inside driver moving into the other driver's path. In the TS video, Tony seems to already have the car pointed down the straight coming out of the turn and then he does a very quick jog right to put Ward into the wall. I think I understand what you are saying about the outside driver needing to yield because of vision restrictions, but it seems very unlikely that Tony didn't know Ward was there. When you race karts, for example, you can't really see much because the karts are so short and you can't easily look to the side or back, but you tend to know exactly where competitor karts from the sounds and your own senses. I can't see how somebody as experienced as Tony wouldn't know Ward was there even with limited vision.

 

YOU have concluded that there is "zero evidence...other than wild conjecture." The "provability" goes to weight and credibility.

Others conclude differently.

Others will continue to conclude differently.

The REAL question is what the trier of fact concludes, assuming there is a civil suit.

In your opinion, the only evidence is x, y or z. However, your evidence is subject to interpretation, which means that it's not solely objective.

BUT FOR the collision, Ward would be alive. Every other car was able to avoid Ward. Ward pointed and ran at TS' car. It does not mean that TS could not have avoided him.

CW