Postby shafeeq » Thu Apr 30, 2015 2:30 pm
I have to respectfully disagree that all drivers (or anyone else participating, for that matter) fully understand the risks the drivers are taking, and those who do, don't believe it can happen to them. The same, especially the latter, is probably true in many other high-risk sports. Where one can win by taking more risk, the sport usually sets a limit (rational or irrational) on what risks people are allowed to take, both to level the playing field, protect people from their own competitiveness, and protect the sport from any one individual. There's plenty of examples of this in buggy already. I'm all for more awareness, especially since so many of the hazards are outside of the driver's control. The fact that we repeatedly have cars getting on the course, hatches falling off, brake failures, all of which _lead_ to injury and yet the most pressing issue is what to do _after_ an injury says something.
Doctors do manage to deal with sports like skiing, cycling, motocross, speedskating, etc. that have the same speeds and injury potential as buggy, so one can look at what they do. I can think of people who've chosen to quit each of those after recovering from an injury, because repeating the same crash would've resulted in permanent injury. Have any hospitalized drivers ever returned to driving? I agree it is ridiculous to require a re-certification process, but not certification in the first place.