"As drivers would have to think more carefully about the consequences, the number of incidents requiring investigation would reduce."
I doubt this. You are either advocating deliberate unfairness where someone can be found guilty, be quite heavily penalised and have no recourse to justice (and I suspect that a lawyer would have a field day with that) or you are merely wishing it would be so.
Perhaps we need to clarify exactly what you mean by the offence.
Are we talking avoidable contact, deliberate contact, contact for advantage, contact from avoidable error or any form of contact whatsoever?
You see, we seem to have a very variable description of the offence. Some people are worried about "first corner contact" leading to wipeouts and multiple crashes, others seem to talk about the deliberate binning of a driver, intentionally driving them in to the tyres and others seem to talk about the deliberate contact whereby a faster driver encourages a slower driver to make a mistake from which he can profit.
Now the first corner contact is very difficult to determine. Even using video it is very difficult to see exactly who initiated a contact that may ripple up through the grid until it results in an error that causes a crash. Even more difficult is to determine whether or not that contact was deliberate or avoidable.
Indeed, one of the things that might be most effective in preventing that sort of thing would be to delete the sort of advice that is featured on this forum's driving techniques page. " To start well, first ram your nose against the the bumper of the kart in front and push; that way you cannot be taken by surprise when he accelerates." Add in
"Visualise the start and drive it regardless of what actually happens" and we have recipes for first corner crashes, loading and all the other sins.
The difficulty is that "it works" or seems to.
You aren't going to stop that sort of incident by picking out some scapegoats from the wreckage and ruining their championship at one blow.
And let us not pretend that it isn't going to ruin championships. Being scapegoated and given a 50 point exclusion penalty, when most of the top drivers will get less than 40 points during the seasons (low score wins) is a championship destroyer.
It's a bit like capital punishment, many, perhaps most, people wouldn't object if one could guarantee that those convicted were guilty of the crime, However, some sources estimate that, even in the UK, the actual conviction rate is at least 30% inaccurate; that is, one third of all those convicted of would-be-capital crimes didn't actually do the deed.
If we start sentencing one third of all drivers involved in incidents for crimes they didn't do, then I suspect there will be posts demanding other better solutions.
Now the solution isn't going to be black or white. If we assume that the point of origin for many drivers will be IKR, then by all means have a system of punishment that is immediate, perceived to be fair (even if with experience one would recognise that it isn't) tempered by the commonsense of an official with absolute power and a sliding scale based on the driver's experience, observed intent, the knowledge of a 'Driver's panel', the grid view and no Appeal. It will introduce a culture where contact driving is seen to be 'wrong'. Others might object that they expect IKR to be at least as respectable as MSA racing, and that it will have to abide by the same standards of justice as it matures.
But one cannot introduce strict legislation and hope to correct cultural issues, effectively ethics and morals, by doing so.
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Driving Standards by 'SJTKart76' (09 May 2014 @ 12:39)
