George, you're 100% fixated on one sandbag and why it was there, with no regard for the context. Laguna cannot be made 100% safe in the rainy season. No racetrack can be made 100% safe at any time really, but that's another conversation. The expectation is that the facility takes reasonable steps.
In that area of the track, controlling drainage was more important than ensuring the runoff area was billiard table smooth. As it was, the sand was badly rutted by water in the same area as the sandbags. Without them, it would have been worse. Without them, the track surface itself would have been unsafe because of sand and water running onto the riding surface. This would endanger far more people. In my view, the track made the best practical decision they could to make the location as safe as it could be.
You said:
No track day provider I know of tells a rider to "use" any runoff area. They expressly tell riders to stay on the track surface, as when you leave the surface, all bets are off.
Your supermarket analogy fails on so many levels, it's hard to believe you're seriously using it and would accuse anyone of being divorced from reality for not accepting it as a relevant analogy to this situation.
- A wet floor is typically not an attempt to make the floor or high traffic areas safer, the sandbags absolutely were.
- You don't sign a waiver to walk into a grocery store. You sign one to enter a racing facility and you sign another to operate a vehicle on the track. They are very much worth the paper they are printed on and you're incorrect that they must explicitly spell out a hazard to be useful in defending a lawsuit.
- A wet floor with no signage is an unforeseen hazard; that sandbag was not. Anyone with functioning eyes could see it.
A bit more about waivers: They must include "assumption of risk" language. Laguna's do. They are typically enforceable under circumstances of "ordinary negligence," and not in cases of "gross negligence." Good luck making the case that having sandbags in that area meets the standard of gross negligence.
Danny Kim isn't likely to be the groundbreaking case in the arena of racetrack operations. I'll buy you a beer if he prevails.
You are still wrong on every point. I understand what you think and how the world you think should work but that's not how it actually works.
Laguna is going to have to make the argument that it was more reasonable to have those sandbags there because that's all they CAN say.
I think that's going to be a lot harder to sell than it is to say that it's a dedicated runoff area and you had an event that needs dedicated runoff areas presently on the track.
And since all the trackday riders know that the dedicated runoff area in is there, then you, Laguna Seca, need to tell the trackday riders that that dedicated runoff area is not available for use.
What is Laguna's reasonable excuse for not telling the writers that the dedicated runoff areas that they've spent millions of dollars building and that they're famous for having are not available?
All dedicated runoff areas are there for safety reasons.
This is the whole reason why in the last 40+ years we've gone away from having Armco barriers 2 feet from the edge of the track And now we have many many many yards in some cases hundreds of yards of cleared runoff area that's cleared of everything: ditches, tree, berms, etc, so that a vehicle coming off the track had a high rate of speed is not going to impact anything until they've had space to get slowed down enough in that run off area and therefore the presence dedicated runoff areas makes the track overall safer.
Now your argument that adding the sandbags makes the track safer is a load of crap.
You cannot tell me or a jury that adding the sandbags along the side of the track, during a track day, WHEN IT ISN'T RAINING, makes the track day safer.
To make that argument is totally ridiculous and silly, and from a legal perspective completely unreasonable.
You might be able to argue that it's not economically feasible to move the sandbags fir every event. And I might agree with you on that point.
However, how does that relieve Laguna Seca from their duty to tell their users that paid to use their track with lots of dedicated runoff area that that dedicated runoff area is not available to use for under any circumstances whatsoever?
And the only reasonable answer is that there is no excuse for Laguna not either moving the sandbags or telling the users that the sandbags are there and that the dedicated runoff areas are all closed.
It is not that difficult, nor expensive, nor inconvenient to tell the users that they cannot use dedicated runoff areas.
And Laguna failed to do that.
I know a lot of people that have stopped riding on the street and only ride on the track. And their reasoning is as follows and usually in the following priority:
1) There's no other idiot cross traffic to get in my way and to cause problems. And all the traffic is going in the same direction.
2) The track is wide and flat and consistent and predictable.
3) If something does go wrong I have plenty of runoff area unlike a ditch or a fence or something like that on the street.
4) And if something terribly does go wrong there's an ambulance standing by to take care of me.
And there are additional reasons beyond that.
Since the above are huge priorities as to why people choose to ride on a racetrack and the third highest priority is the availability of runoff areas and all race tracks are trying to improve on and expand dedicated runoff areas. Then the track knows that runoff areas are important to their users. A user considering riding Laguna Seca is very likely going to consider that since Laguna is an FIM approved track with lots and lots and lots of dedicated runoff areas, it must be a lot safer, so having lots of dedicated runoff areas is definitely a safety selling point for Laguna Seca.
So having usable runoff areas is definitely a reason why riders go to race tracks. To make any other argument is not reasonable or realistic.
Regarding your point about supermarkets mopping the floor is not making it safer, I would argue that mopping the forr to clean up an olive oil spill IS a safety improvement. The fact that the grocery store didn't put warnings or otherwise block off the wet area due to it being slick and unsafe is unreasonably failing to do their job to protect their customers from an unreasonably risky environment.
Very similar to not telling track users that a safety buffer area ie a dedicated runoff zone is not available to use.
I actually don't expect this lawsuit to go through at all.
I expect Laguna seca's insurance company is going to say screw this we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars litigating this and very likely lose so they will try and come up with some settlement.
The whole point of all the pretrial motions and discovery and all that is so that both sides can have a good firm hold on the facts of their case. And right about now, as they're seating a jury, the settlement talks are getting really serious.
I expect the Kegwins case was actually settled and the parties jointly dismissed it because of the settlement. And that settlement is private and confidential. This happens all the time. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's the case.
for your track bike
