Watching NASCAR Kills Six People Per Weekend, And No, It's Not Of Boredom

The Fire Department of New York came out with this neat little statistic yesterday: On average, six people die per weekend at a NASCAR race event. Six people per weekend! Six people DIE, on AVERAGE. What the hell goes on at these things? Do they let Ted Kennedy drive one of the cars? Are there ritual sacrifices made to Dale Earnhardt shrines every week?

I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around that number. The FDNY people say that they came up with it through interviews with other fire departments in other NASCAR cities, interviews they conducted in doing research for building a race track in Staten Island. The deaths are attributed to a number of things, including heart attacks, car accidents in and around the tracks, and various other injuries.

Six per weekend. Wow. You could get 80,000 nursing home residents together at one place, and there will still probably be fewer than six of them dying per weekend. Please be careful out there, NASCAR fans. And commenters, I don't want to hear anything about this being "natural selection." That would be misguided, insensitive, and not very nice.

FDNY: 6 die on typical NASCAR weekend [Staten Island Advance]