Canadian survives epic Dakar crash 

"Bob LeDrew" (bobledrew1) 01/14/2015 at 18:48 • Filed to: dakar, offroad, code brown

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If you ever thought Dakar was not serious business, this should disabuse you of the notion:

That would be 63-year-old Matt Campbell of Calgary, Alberta, with co-driver Luis "Fito" Ramirez, and navigator Nico Ambriz, doing some gymanstics. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and bruised all over, but not hurt any worse than that. Which is amazing. Campbell is driver for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Another angle:

Scorpio GTX1 > Bob LeDrew 01/14/2015 at 18:51

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It's business is so serious that they list the drivers' blood types on the car.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > Bob LeDrew 01/14/2015 at 21:31

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It's awesome that another driver stopped and jumped out with their fire extinguisher to help.

Bob LeDrew > AMGtech - now with more recalls! 01/15/2015 at 09:53

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I would hope / assume that in a race like Dakar that racers do that sort of thing out of both camaraderie and necessity — if they don't help each other in the middle of a desert, who will? It's not like Indycar or F1 with extensively trained safety teams literally seconds away.

Indycar has a four-vehicle team at every race with 18 personnel; F1's rescue cars are expected to be at any crash site within 30 seconds.

I can't imagine a way to provide anything close to that performance in something like Dakar.

DrScientist > AMGtech - now with more recalls! 01/19/2015 at 15:22

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in some of these races, where there aren't stewards or safety personnel around every corner it is actually required for race entrants to stop for cars ahead of them that have crashed. to evaluate the situation, use extinguishers and wait for the actual safety personnel to arrive. failing to stop would result in penalties. if the crashed drivers are ok, they can wave off the following car. i believe an allowance of some sort is given to the car that stopped for the crash.