If someone you know drives too fast, please don’t be afraid to tell them. No one else is going to until they’ve broken something, or someone.

If your concentrating on driving, driving within the means of yourself and your car, you can still enjoy the performance of your car while considerably reducing the risks of something going wrong. It is impossible however to completely remove all risk, hence why judgement is so important. That’s what I think is missing today.

Ironically it’s most likely because cars are too safe these days.

Peltzman Effect
From my favourite podcast Skeptoid Episode #118;

“The Peltzman Effect was nicely summed up in an episode of the TV show CSI: “The safer they make the cars, the more risks the driver is willing to take.” It’s named after the regulatory economist San Peltzman who first described the effect.”

“…When you make it safer to take risks, more people will take them;”

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I have to admit though, I have learnt a lot about setting up a car with iRacing and this sort of stuff makes it easier, and more interesting.

How to;

While in iRacing you turn on telemetry (Alt-L),  the exporter gets the data out of iRacing (download here) and converts it into MoTec format. Download the MoTec i2 Pro and create a new project, open the log files and away you go.

A project already setup by Remy Lozza is available here and read more on the iRacing forum thread.

I had been getting a couple of shots on the grid and once the cars started their warm up lap I quickly ran around the back of the pits and jumped up in the grandstand to get some shots of the start. Still had it in manual mode from the grid and just had a second to set my levels and the race started, initially shooting the leaders as they launched and then seconds later felt this huge hit of heat on the side of my face, looked to my right and this was the first shot I got off;

Just kept smashing the shutter button without even checking levels, they were slightly under exposed but I think that actually worked out better for most of them considering the light coming from the fire ball. You can see the twirl of air as the heat of the explosion headed upwards.

I didn’t see Steve get out of his car, but he got out first. Karl took some time getting out which left everyone holding their breath.

Crews from all over the place jumped the pit wall and started attacking the fire with any extinguishes they could get their hands on.

The fire itself was out pretty quick, first shot 10:39:24, last shot was 10:39:58.

Video here and the in-car shot;

Ken Block once again shows how to produce a viral video. Awesome.

This also shows our triple screen Matrox setup with a Logitech G25. The three screens give a peripheral view of the car which is fantastic when overtaking, or being overtaken, certainly leads to less contact.

So only a few weeks after it had joined it’s new owners, we took it camping in the Barrington Top in NSW, where there just happened to be a mountain to climb.

I got this shot from the top, where funnily enough there is an old caravan that someone dragged up there.

I made sure I got the light levels right for the sky so that I could get in the sky and clouds and then after a bit of low level light adjustments and a bit of vignetting this is what we came out with.

Reminds me of that typical Top Gear style shot.

I love shooting this car!

The orange is so heavy on any contrasting colours and you can really push orange.

Of course the lower light meant running the ISO a little high and dropping to a fairly low shutter speed, really need a bigger lens!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/norrgard/sets/72157623300000583/