In 1971 at the Indy 500 a ‘Pace car’ (or safety car) went off the track as soon as the race began and crashed into a stand holding the photographers. Somehow there were no fatalities. The whole event is covered in nice, blurry old color footage in the above video and is examined further in the more detailed video below, which includes an ABC news interview with one of the photographer guys in the stand. The interview comes off like a ‘Bob and Ray’ segment–if you love their comedy as I do you’ll see exactly what I mean).

Now–there are two things notably stupid about this accident that are pointed out by the play-by-play announcer. One is that the Pace car was being driven not by a professional race car driver but by a man who owns a car dealership, with the somehow perfect-for-the-occassion name of Elvin Palmer. Given that the role of a Pace car is to be the lead car in a race and serves to set a speed limit for the drivers following it you would think it would be especially important that the driver not be an amateur. The second stupid thing is that the legendary astronaut John Glenn was, for some reason, riding in the Pace car with the driver (and two others). How one of the most carefully trained, intelligent and clearly safety-conscious men in the world could have gotten into a race car being driven by a car salesman is quite beyond me. Let’s be glad that this wasn’t the inglorious end to Glenn’s stellar life and career.