The GCR and You

[Greg Amy]

Sometimes a driver will start waving to warn following drivers about an incident immediately in front on the road. Again, the following driver will (should) have seen the incident and/or flag. The driver doing the waving is merely distracting himself from the task at hand, which is to safely navigate the incident zone.

John, I'm going to disagree with you on this one. While I agree with your characterization of "should have seen the incident and/or flag", we both know that's not always the case. There have been numerous times when someone has been tucked up under my ass (drafting, setting up for a pass, in formation toward the green flag) where a vigorous wave has gotten the attention of the passing driver to the situation at hand. In fact, in our driver's schools we actually teach drivers to wave during a race-start-wave-off.

Case in point, last weekend's crash at LRP. Had the leading driver waved vigorously to catch the attention of the trailing driver (assuming the leading driver had the clock cycles and car control availability to make that happen), I have zero doubt that this situation could have turned out differently.

Nope I strongly disagree, and should I be placed in that situation again I will most certainly warn the driver behind me of a dramatically changing situation via a vigorous hand/arm wave. If the trailing driver misinterprets a vigorous wave back-and-forth as a point-by, well, not my problem as it's obvious that person has totally lost situational awareness, and nothing else I could have done would have improved it...

Greg Amy


P.S., Nicely-done series. Looking forward to the next one(s). Please do consider combining all these into a PDF doc for future downloads.

[spnkzss]

John, I'm going to disagree with you on this one. While I agree with your characterization of "should have seen the incident and/or flag", we both know that's not always the case. There have been numerous times when someone has been tucked up under my ass (drafting, setting up for a pass, in formation toward the green flag) where a vigorous wave has gotten the attention of the passing driver to the situation at hand. In fact, in our driver's schools we actually teach drivers to wave during a race-start-wave-off.

Case in point, last weekend's crash at LRP. Had the leading driver waved vigorously to catch the attention of the trailing driver (assuming the leading driver had the clock cycles and car control availability to make that happen), I have zero doubt that this situation could have turned out differently.

Nope I strongly disagree, and should I be placed in that situation again I will most certainly warn the driver behind me of a dramatically changing situation via a vigorous hand/arm wave. If the trailing driver misinterprets a vigorous wave back-and-forth as a point-by, well, not my problem as it's obvious that person has totally lost situational awareness, and nothing else I could have done would have improved it...

Greg Amy


P.S., Nicely-done series. Looking forward to the next one(s). Please do consider combining all these into a PDF doc for future downloads.

+1 on everything tGA said, including the PDF doc. That would be great to hand out at a driver's school.

[John Nesbitt]

John, I'm going to disagree with you on this one. While I agree with your characterization of "should have seen the incident and/or flag", we both know that's not always the case. There have been numerous times when someone has been tucked up under my ass (drafting, setting up for a pass, in formation toward the green flag) where a vigorous wave has gotten the attention of the passing driver to the situation at hand. In fact, in our driver's schools we actually teach drivers to wave during a race-start-wave-off.

Greg,

I recognize that there are two sides to this. As a steward, perhaps I tend to see the bad outcomes from misplaced signals.

On waved-off starts, the GCR requires a hand signal (see corrected original post - I dropped a sentence).

John

[Racerlinn]

John, agree that this has been a great series.
But...also have to disagree about in-car hand signal. I have had two distinct instances in the past couple years where my vigorous in-car hand waving (with my right hand) has kept a following car from plowing me. Both involved following cars tucked up close, once being a spinning car directly in front of me and the second when I missed a shift. After both races, the following driver told me he appreciated the warning.
A point-by is much different from a vigorous wave.

[pballance]

Thanks John for the reminders, I know I can use them.

As a relatively new driver I was taught, and continue to use the raised arm to indicate to the cars behind me that I am suddenly slowing. Whether this is for a yellow flag, waving or standing, that I have observed, or a mechanical condition of my car. Am I wrong to do so?
For me, it is good common sense and I have had other drivers do the same as I approach them. It is different than a point by and easily understood by the following car if they see the raised hand.

FWIW I had 6 lanes of interstate lit up by brake lights Tuesday afternoon as people dropped from 75+ to dead stop for a tractor trailer on fire on the median wall. Not only did I check my mirrors and leave myself an escape path I realized, after coming to a stop, I had raised my hand to alert the drivers behind me. I feel much safer on track than with the idiots I normally commute with.

Paul

[shwah]

How do we set up a bump draft without driver hand signals?