Video: Ambulance Crossing Track Causes Near Miss In Race At Roebling Road Raceway (Updated)

An ambulance produced a very scary moment during a WERA National Challenge race event March 19 at Roebling Road Raceway, near Savannah, Georgia.

Roebling Road Raceway is a club-level road race course where the paddock and most of the infrastructure is located within the interior of the track itself. To enter or exit the interior of the track, vehicles must cross over the actual racing surface at the start/finish line on the front straightaway.

The crossing point at Roebling Road Raceway is gated on both sides and most crossings are closely monitored and only done when the track is “cold,” as in no racing vehicles are active on the track, and rarely when the track is “hot,” when race vehicles are active on the track.

In some rare cases, like when an ambulance is trying to exit the track with a patient in need of critical care, Race Control gives the ambulance clearance to cross the hot track. In these rare cases, it is only done when there is a sizeable break in race traffic and with the appropriate warning flags displayed by flagging stations preceding the crossing, warning riders that the ambulance is entering the track.

On Sunday, something went wrong.

Toward the end of the Open Superstock Expert and Novice WERA National Challenge race, an ambulance pulled across the front straightaway when the track was hot with no warning to the riders, causing two riders to crash at very high speed.  And it was all caught on the forward-facing on-board camera of Novice racer Daniel Alexander.

Alexander, who was riding a Yamaha YZF-R1, is seen on the video exiting Turn Eight, passing through Turn Nine at over 100 mph, accelerating to 140 mph on the front straightaway until he sees a white ambulance crossing the front straightaway perpendicular to race direction.

Amazingly, Alexander was able to slow slightly, veer left, and miss colliding with the front of the ambulance, but lost control in the grassy area to the left of the front straightaway and crashed. Alexander was relatively uninjured in the crash, he told Roadracingworld.com in an online message, but was unable to speak on the phone prior to post time.

 

 

Dwayne A. Brown, another Novice racer on a Yamaha YZF-R1, was behind Alexander on the front straightaway. Brown veered right but clipped the rear of the ambulance, before crashing. Brown (who goes by “Dwayne Breezie” on Facebook), posted that he went to a local hospital in pain but did not suffer in any major injuries.

Brown declined to comment directly to Roadracingworld.com until he’s had a chance to acquire legal representation, he wrote in an online message.

When contacted by Roadracingworld.com, WERA responded via text message that it was working on a press release it hoped to release later today.

We will update this story as more information becomes available.

 

 

More, from a press release issued by WERA Motorcycle Roadracing, Inc.:

On March 19th in the Open Superstock race at Roebling Road Raceway, there was was an incident on the front straight involving an ambulance and two riders.  The ambulance was leaving the track to transport an injured rider from an earlier incident.  Due to a miscommunication between the ambulance driver and race officials the ambulance crossed in front of two motorcycles.  Both riders did fall but walked away from the crash.  WERA is investigating what led to this incident and will be instituting any necessary changes to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.