Bummer.
Too many amatuers causing safety concerns?
sounds like partly that, but mostly the sheer number of competitors.
right, i’ve been up for about 70 hours now, so i’ll go back and adjust this when i’ve had some sleep.
speaking to some of the organizers about this it is mostly being done as a reactio0n to the death in Chicago.
not an over reaction in most ways i might add.
with the possibility already being raised of litigation in the chicago thing, it’s only a matter of time until this shit goes south.
the tour da chicago is probably going to kill alley cats in the US for a while.
and with good reason.
the tour da chicago wasn’t an alley cat, it wasn’t organised or even particularly raced by messengers, and the only people who are calling it a cat are the media.
for all that we speak of fakengers, and posengers, and whatever else we call people at the moment, the fact remains that monster track started as a few messengers racing, and is now looking at about 300. that’s a fuck load of people to be racing through the streets, and if you’ve ever done one you’ll know a lot of those people don’t know what the hell they are doing.
i’m not saying that the death in chicago wasn’t a tragedy, but the person i feel worst for is the driver. they didn’t have a choice about what happened. the rider did.
and the reaction of a small minority in abusing the driver and blaming cars for the accident is only making it worse for us.
the police here know about the accident because it’s been all over the internet, and they know about the races coming up because they listen.
are they going to do anything about them?
who knows.
i’m not saying that the chicago rider would be alive today if he’d been a messenger.
he’d be just as dead.
i’m not saying that if it had been a "real " cat it wouldn’t have happened.
it wouldn’t have made any difference.
i am saying that the fad popularity of the scene has caused a lot of problems, and now will cause even more.
there are people complaining about squid calling the main race off, and some if it has got pretty nasty. one fuckwit was even talking about suing because he’d already bought airline tickets and was pissed off. but i think cyclehawk are doing absolutely the right thing here.
huge, massively publicized events with a shit load of inexperienced riders is just going to fuck it for all of us.
it’s an extension of the whole brakeless fixie thing.
for every 10 people who ride brakeless, it’s only about 20% who can or should. the rest are just following a trend and causing problems. have a look at cities where riding brakeless is banned. it’s almost always the result of some idiot mowing down a ped.
what this means for us here in australia?
well, i’m supposed to be organizing global gutz for brisbane this year, and my partner is already worried that if anything happens i’ll be held responsible. she’s worried about the fact that there was a rumour the organizers of TDC might be getting jail time if it can proved that the event promoted the breaking of road rules, or unsafe riding practices.
and lets face it, all alley cats do. it’s pretty much the sole reason they exist.
when it was just a few messengers racing after work, no-one noticed or cared.
now that it’s become so big around the world, a lot more people are aware of it, and the various authorities are going to ass fuck the organizers if anything goes wrong.
shit, i’m tired. i’m going to bed. i’ll sort this out tomorrow.
just thought you’d want to know some background.
I imagine a lot of the people who’ve been racing Monstertrack for years would be pretty annoyed about this, and understandably so. The fact is, things like this and the issues they cause is just a natural progression as things get larger and more popular. I don’t doubt that alleycats will continue to be run, but probably on a smaller, more underground level with promotion done by word of mouth and through smaller networks.
We can only hope that it doesn’t result in a heavy crackdown and focus that will make even small 'cats difficult to run/participate in.
Let’s be honest though, we’re talking illegal street racing. It’s impressive that they’ve managed to come this far and get this big without a major police effort to shut them down.
im not annoyed. I was nervous as hell thinking about how WRONG things could go the last time I rode it. 150 racers. I knew about 20. Even as a rider I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear no one got hurt.
No one mentions how Lucas Brunelle got hit by a van trying to film The Benjamins (still the best race ever planned), ended up in hospital with concussion, totalled his Lamborghini bike.
Why’d he get hit?
Ran a red without looking - just like he does in all of his film clips. That’s why his filming is clean as he usually has ‘spotters’, but not in that case.
It’s the smartest move yet and like sekt said - back to word of mouth promotion
A few years ago the police did stop alleycats and there was a major lull in the scene.
You’ve also got non-courier run events popping up everywhere, so once again everyone with a bike and bag must be ‘a courier’ when seen by the public.
Yeah, I meant the progression from a tight-knit race to something so massive, rather than the cancellation itself. But that’s a moot point!