People assigning any blame to Tony Stewart in this tragic event is just part of the Pussification of America......someone has always got to be at fault because noone can be responsible for their own actions anymore. I don't follow or claim to have the pulse of Nascar and I apologize if I come across as insensitive but I'm just stating the obvious. When you get out of a race car of any kind, start throwing a temper tantrum as you run down into the middle of a track at night in a black racing suit, not to mention in the middle of a live car race that's 100% a good way to get hit and die, plain and simple. I don't care if Stewart was trying to scare him and got to close or whatever, if you don't want to die don't run into the middle of a race track. It couldn't' be more black and white. Darwinism, case closed.
@mobius481 here are a few samples....from foxsports.com tony should be brought up on vehicular manslaughter.. plain and simple.... It is Murder as the back end slides out to hit Kevin. Tony S stepped on the gas to hit him with the tire. Manslaughter charges for Stewart!!! In the meantime, any driver who did the reckless things Stewart did (regardless of Wards actions) should be banned for life from racing! ...from msn.com.... To think that Tony Stewart is innocent is the same as saying OJ Simpson was innocent !!! manslaughter 2 it looks like - otherwise, smoke gets away with murder DA is gathering seal tight evidence and Tony will wear "orange" again wait and see.
Check out this video....about 6 minutes worth of a sprint car in-car camera. Two things to really notice - even taking into consideration that the video is at race speed, not pacing: 1. how obstructed vision is to the right of the car, and 2. how much of your vision is obscured by a car directly in front of you. Add to the fact that this camera probably gives us a wider field of view than the driver sees through his helmet, and I think it is completely plausible that Stewart never saw Ward until the car in front of him passed him....and if he happened to be looking to his inside, he may have seen him even later than that.
Death has always been an unfortunate part of auto racing. NASCAR spends millions upon millions of dollars to make the sport as safe as possible. The safety standards for the cars and the equipment cost a bundle to comply with but if a team can afford to be a part of NASCAR they can afford to comply with those standards. At a midget car track I don't know how safe they are able to make it. How much does a racing team that's not owned by somebody named Tony Stewart have to spend? I used to go to races at Baton Rouge Speedway. It was a dirt track about 3/8ths mile between Baton Rouge and Baker. Most of the drivers were just guys who owned auto repair shops and built their own cars. Maybe the race winners made enough to pay for their gas, I don't know. There were plenty of crashes but I never saw anybody get hurt bad enough to not be able to walk away from it. For a while there was one car that was sponsored by Budweiser. It was the only car with a professional sponsor paint job and the Bud car won every heat of every race that I saw it run. The other guys couldn't compete with Bud's money. Which brings up the question how can those other midget cars compete with Tony Stewart. Tony races in those things for fun and the race sponsors probably couldn't even pay him an appearance fee worthy of his name. What Tony can afford to spend on what for him is a hobby is more than an average guy can afford in a whole season of racing. I don't think that safety standards come into play, though. That kid would have gotten killed at any level of racing if he got out of his car like that.
internet posters. I know of no pros who are saying things like this, although Bob Ryan did speculate briefly yesterday morning.
THe average age of those posters is probably 15, roughly equal to their IQ. Absolutely not to be taken seriously. Rational, intelligent folks don't respond that way. Troll city, the Internet.
Nancy Grace on HLN just went off on Tony. Preceded her show with his "history of road rage" showing pictures of him on different tracks. She even said he (Smoke) gunned the kid down "as evidenced" on the youtube video. I wonder if she meant that or is that just stay tuned vile? So you don't have to, I will suffer through her BS until she gets to commentary...
