The fact that the Isle of Man is largely self governing, and that the TT is a big tourist draw perhaps leads to things not being banned.
The Wikipedia list includes deaths for other events using the TT course, so there were no deaths during the TT itself this year, but there was one during the Manx Grand Prix, a different event.
Yikes!!! Who keeps critters like squirrels, dogs, etc. off the course? I've ridden a lot of fast long twisty visibility impaired descents on a bicycle, up to about 55mph (not 136mph), and have had plenty of opportunities to evade obstacles, moving or not. Been involuntarily airborne a few times. To be sure I enjoy it as one of the most enjoyable activities of my life, but... that video is orders of magnitude more terrifying.
Why would it not be allowed? All drivers are adults who, on a track, should be left to decide their own fate.
Spectators if they go there to watch should also be left to decide their own fate. It's not like they're not aware that accidents happens and a piece of a car can hit them right between the eyes and kill them instantly.
This "things should be banned on a track because they are unsafe" is getting tiring.
> The above Wikipedia quote is also contradicted later in the same article, which says that a driver named Louis O’Regan died in 2024.
The list of fatalities is for on the Isle of Man TT Mountain Course which is used by both the Isle of Man TT races and Manx Grand Prix races (the "amateur rider's alternative" to the Island of Man TT). Louis O’Regan died qualifying for the Manx Grand Prix, meaning the 2024 Isle of Man TT was deathless. The list is confusingly combining two races for some reason.
"Between 14 and 19 June 2024, at least 1,301 pilgrims had died due to extreme heat in Mecca during the Hajj of 2024, with temperatures exceeding 50 °C (122 °F).[41]"
Agreed - and in proportion to the number of competitors, I would guess that the fatality rate is less than, say, climbing K2.
Update: Summing the 'number of finishes' column in the Competitor Analysis' on the IOMTT site I get 17355 finishes (the data appears to cover competitors who have finished 6 or more races.) The above-mentioned Wikipedia list of TT fatalities page gives a total of 281 (including 16 non-rider fatalities), giving a BoE figure of 1.62%. In contrast, the Wikipedia 'List of deaths on eight-thousanders' page says that, as of August 2023, about 800 climbers have summited K2, and 96 have died trying.
Annapurna has the worst statistics among these mountains: "for decades, it has the highest climber to fatality ratio of around 32%".
For the TT, if you think the number of competitors rather than finishes is the correct figure to use, the TT list used above contains 1275 competitors, for a fatality rate of about 22% (though, as mentioned above, this seems to exclude competitors with fewer than 6 finishes.)
If you aren't familiar with the TT, it's crazier than you can imagine. It's a race on ordinary roads, large sections of which run through residential villages. Spectators are seriously injured on a fairly regular basis. Completely uninvolved bystanders are seriously injured on occasion. Local residents have come home to find the charred wreckage of a motorbike in their front room.
It's incredible that races like the IoM TT and the Northwest 200 still exist, but I can't imagine anyone ever sanctioning such races if they were new. There's just so much unmanageable risk.
Presumably the motorbike owner or team or event sponsors have insurance to pay for the charred front rooms and bystander injuries? I could see spectators being at their own risk, but if the event becomes uninsurable, it will stop being held.
Yeah I’m totally familiar with the TT. I was a fan of MotoGP growing up.
It is absolutely bonkers to me. But can you expand a bit on “completely unrelated bystanders” because spectators also know the risks of being a spectator. It’s crazy.
But is there a situation where someone that lives in IoM isn’t aware of what’s going on that week or that weekend?
Not that I’m against making things safer here and there, and in particular spectator zones. But someone standing on a sidewalk to get a view of a motorcycle going 200MPH merely feet from them, knows what they’re risking, don’t they?
And I agree that such a race would never get sanctioned today. Even one like Monaco in F1. It’s too tight.
I am sort of with Kant who believed that we have duties and responsibilities to others. There is an enormous cost imposed by deaths caused by reckless actions, which is not limited just to family and friends. The effects of these types of things fan out beyond the individual incident as well. These deaths normalize behaviors that are then mimicked by future people keeping us stuck in the cycle of wanton and unnecessary death.
Every man dies, not every man really lives. I'm glad there are still some people with the courage to push the limits and damn the consequences. Modern life has become a little too safe and comfortable. Cheers to the Isle of Man TT riders, and let's hope the moralizing scolds and killjoys never get their way.
These people would have died anyway. We haven't reached immortality. It is mostly a scheduling problem.
Also first responders at the TT and irish road races like the flying doctors [1] are also mostly big fans of the sport and I would say you would be silly to call Isle of Man your home if you can't stand the TT or Manx GP. And you are totally free to take your vacations during those events if finding a crashed bike and a corpse on your lawn is an issue to you.
Waste is kind of a stretch. Every outsider involved would be getting paid.
If I'm hosting a race, ensuring medical staff, etc are present it's not really a waste of their time if someone does get hurt/dies. It's literally why they are there. You could argue that their qualifications can be better used elsewhere but that applies to anything.
One factor is the format: it's a time-trial event, not a head-to-head race. So if a rider dies, it's hard to pin the blame on anyone but the rider, who clearly knew what they were signing up for.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driver_deaths_in_motor...