Photographer Hit After Rally Car Flies Off Course!

For years I’ve watched with a great deal of bewilderment as rally cars scream along their route while spectators and photographers stand literally feet – and often inches – from the race path with nothing between themselves and the speeding cars but hope and faith. While I understand that logistically and financially it’s nearly impossible, and certainly implausible, to put actual barriers along the route, and likely every bit as hard to keep spectators from lining up along the route, there’s an undeniable uneasiness that weighs on my stomach even watching these videos on YouTube. There is a plastic ribbon marking the route that spectators are supposed to stay behind, but we’ve all seen videos of them on the other side of that line.

It seems the inevitable has occurred, though, as you can see in the video below. In the 2018 Sno•Drift Rally, a car left the course after skidding through a particularly treacherous corner and hit a photographer standing just outside the plastic ribbon barrier. The ground seemed to be unexpectedly icy, resulting in the car going completely out of control and backing off the course at a decent speed. The photographer seemed to be “lost in the lens”, a phenomenon where photographers and videographers focus on what they’re seeing in their viewfinder and fail to react when the cars come toward them, leaving him directly in the path of the car. He had time to react had he not been locked into what he was seeing through his camera, but instead, the car stuck him hard, sending him flying high through the air.

According to comments on the video, he suffered a lacerated liver and some obvious cuts and bruises but is expected to make a full recovery. It seems the driver was uninjured, and the car didn’t look to be too heavily damaged, so hopefully, this will be a lesson for all who see it that didn’t cost anybody their life.