No More Motor Sports

I think the time is long overdue for a global moratorium on motor sports.  Do I say this because Dan Wheldon was killed yesterday in the final race of the IndyCar series?  While his death is tragic it is not the reason why I think that the age of motor sport should be ended.  Drivers know the risks when they enter the profession and occasionally risk becomes reality.

No, the reason I think motor sports should be banned is that they are no longer worth the trouble they cause.  Today, they serve only one function -- entertainment.  I don't even consider racing a sport.  It's merely a spectacle, like a circus.  Drivers are just like trapeze artists who can be considered athletes, as can astronauts.  Certainly the rigours of their trade require extreme levels of fitness and skill.  That isn't enough to make flying through the air with the greatest of ease or launching into orbit a sport, so why racing?

And all this spectacle costs us is massive amounts of pollution.  How much?  A Formula-1 race car burns about 225 litres of fuel in a single race.  That's about 1 1/2 barrels of petrol. There were 19 races in the 2011 season each roughly 300km  in length.  Between 20 and 24 cars (twelve teams of 2 cars apiece) start each race.  Using the lower of these numbers (to make a conservative estimate and) to account for cars that do not finish the race, the races themselves consume almost 550 barrels of oil.  Doesn't sound like much to you?  It can be restated in terms of tons of oil, more than 68, actually.  If you count all the practice sessions, qualifying sessions and testing sessions, each of the 12 teams use about 200,000 L of fuel.  That's almost 2000 TONS of fuel per racing season.

2000 tons seems like an awful lot, but that number is just for Formula-1 racing.  If you include the other forms of racing and regulating racing bodies (including 'minor leagues'), like IndyCar, NASCAR, Formula-3, or the National Hot Rod Association, and touring car, sports car, endurance,  production car*, one-make, stock car,  rallying, drag, off-road, kart, motocross, motorcycle, monster truck, demolition derby... really the list is almost endless!  It would not surprise me in the slightest if millions of tons of fuel were burned each year in the name of racing.  Even if it was only one million it would be equivalent to 2-4 supertanker ships at full deadweight capacity.  (It is also worth noting that some racing series do not burn gasoline or even necessarily petroleum derivatives, but fuels like ethanol which can be produced from biomass.  This is mostly irrelevant since the issue is not about 'dependence upon foreign oil' but air pollution which is produced by burning any hydrocarbon regardless of its origins.)

* I have nothing against production car racing.  What is learned in this activity is directly translatable to everyday life and can be considered research...with a paying audience.


Before the gearheads out there slam me for not putting these numbers in perspective, 1 million tons of fuel isn't an enormous amount in terms of global consumption.  Based on 2005 estimates, the entirety of Spain and the United Kingdom would only take 2-3 days to burn a million tons of oil.  You might conclude that this means that the carbon output of the racing industry was insignificant.  You're entitled to your opinion, but I think that people that make this conclusion are either ignoring a lot of details or looking at the issue in a highly subjective manner, one where the goal is to justify racing.

That million tons of fuel allowed (about) 100 million people to go about their daily lives, conduct their businesses and heat their homes for two to three days.  In economic terms, roughly between $17.4 and $26.1 billion (production parity) was produced in the UK and Spain for an average 2-3 day period in 2005.  So 1 million tons of fuel allowed 100 million people to conduct their lives and allowed them to produce between 17 and 26 billion dollars worth of goods and services.  That seems like a reasonable return on investment for the use of the fuel.  In contrast, racing provides entertainment.  There are an infinite number of other forms of entertainment that the people that watched those races could have spent their time doing that they would have found just as entertaining if they no longer had racing as an entertainment option.  In other words, racing could end today and ultimately no one would really notice.  Quality of life would remain completely unchanged, with the one exception being that a million tons of fuel wasn't consumed and wasn't converted into pollution.  (It should be noted that humanity enormously overemphasizes the importance of entertainment as a whole and is even worse when it considers the value of specific forms of entertainment.)

"What about the other benefits of racing," you may ask.  Sure, in earlier days all the efforts put into engineering the race cars resulted in some advances that would benefit the world at large.  Other than the few racing series that use basic production cars I don't think the innovations being made are that useful in everyday life anymore.

The primary engineering innovations in racing are of more and more efficient engines, but it's not the kind of efficiency that the public needs.  Racing efficiency is measured in terms of power -- how much power/acceleration can be squeezed out of each unit of fuel.  Everyday efficiency is a measure of distance traveled per unit of fuel.  Increasing power efficiency usually lowers traditional fuel efficiency, so this really doesn't help the real world at all.

Advances in materials science are limited mostly because the regulatory boards keep having to slow the cars down!  As such, advances in materials science are usually banned preventing further testing and further advancement.

Advances in aerodynamics are of limited utility since the dynamics are contingent upon rate of speed.  Fortunately (for safety reasons), everyday use vehicles do not go anywhere near as fast as most race cars so these advances are more useful to aerospace engineers than automobile engineers.

The one area where advances could be made that would directly translate to real life would be in terms of braking.  Most of the brake force at extremely high speeds comes from (aerodynamic & friction) drag, bot from mechanical brakes but it is still possible that something might be learned about making better brakes for everyday use vehicles.  I would love to know how much of today's braking systems have their origins in professional racing.

The question then becomes "Is all this pollution worth the limited number of practical advances in technology that arise from the activity?"  I doubt it.  I'd love to be shown to be wrong.

Is there anything else that racing provides that could justify its continued existence?  I can only think of one thing.  Racing provides a venue for incorrigible speed demons to indulge in their addiction.  Stated that way it doesn't sound very positive, but it saves lives.  Inexplicably, many humans revel in speed so completely that one would think life itself depended upon it.  Hollywood knows it --  just look at the number of movies and television shows that have come out in the last 20 years with racing, speed or race cars as the main theme.  By and large, they were all significant financial successes too which goes to show how widespread this primal urge is.  These people will simply not be denied.  If they are not provided with safe venues for going as fast as technology will allow them they will do it wherever it is convenient for them.  That means (your) public roads where more sensible, less impulsive people, including children, are just waiting to become innocent bystanders and unfortunate statistics.  Keeping these nut bars off the road possibly the only non-technological benefit of having organized racing.  However, the extent of the benefit is not really measurable, in large part because the spectacle/sport itself encourages this dangerous behaviour at the same time that it provides an outlet for it.  In other words, we don't really know whether lives would be saved or lost in the long term if racing was eliminated, so I guess we can't really call this a benefit with any confidence.

So, I call for an end to all racing that does not directly contribute to engineering advancements applicable to everyday driving.  I know it will never happen.  As I stated earlier, humans ridiculously overvalue entertainment, it is even more highly valued than health, so virtually no one will admit the logic in this argument. It conflicts with their choice of entertainment and that is all that matters to them.  The inmates are running the asylum, let all beware!

CRC Guaranteed To Pass: 2 Good 2 B True?

For years now, CRC has advertised their product Guaranteed To Pass.(G2P) as a method of passing 'pesky' (vehicular) emissions tests.  They also go so as to say that G2P doesn't "cheat or fool" emissions tests.  Well, if it isn't cheating or fooling the emissions test, what does it do?

Their words are that G2P will "superclean the entire fuel system."  I'm not 100% certain, but I suspect that a better description would be that it coats and conditions your fuel system.  By either description, it temporarily reduces your vehicle's emissions and they are confident enough to guarantee that this boost in performance will be enough to pass the test.

In the event that it doesn't work, and any Internet search will reveal enough anecdotes and self-reports to show that this happens, there are conditions to the guarantee.  You need your G2P receipt.  That's completely standard, so no problem here. You need documentation of "before and after" emissions tests.  In other words, you can't use G2P in a preventive fashion and have any hope of receiving your money back.  You must document that your vehicle failed the test and then failed the test again after using their product.  Finally, you need to produce either a Provincial Waiver or a bill for repairs that did allow the vehicle to pass the emissions test.  Whoops!  That's a third emissions test required to get your money back.  I'm not sure if this is just typical legal rigmarole or if this is the sign of a company that isn't all that confident in its product.

But that's not really the point.

So, back to the whole 'what does it do?' issue.  I think the scenario is very much like the following example:

A teacher takes pity on one of his/her students and lets them retake a failed test, this time with complete access to their textbook and notes.  The test wasn't designed for students to have access to these materials.  And the student passes, but is that really a surprise?  A short time after writing the test the student could be tested again, without aids, and is more likely to fail than pass.  The test, which is supposed to measure what they have learned ended up testing something else, something less rigorous.  When we look at the piece of paper that says the student passed the course, what does it really mean?  Is it any indicator of future success?

How is this any different than G2P being used for emissions tests?  Annual emissions tests are supposed to measure the likely amount of pollution your car will produce for the year (or more) until your next test.  It is administered in order to assure that the vehicles on the road meet a minimum emission standard.  Use of G2P makes the test become an estimate for the pollution emissions expected for the first 3,000 miles driven after the product is applied.  If you use an additive that has a temporary effect, like G2P, what is it really testing?  The G2P label and literature state that you should "use every 3,000 miles to improve fuel economy, acceleration and reduce emissions."  This amounts to a legal disclaimer limiting the company's legal responsibility for people 'misuse' of their product.  What kind of misuse?  The kind that almost assuredly occurs in 95% (or more) of all usage -- using the product to pass the mandatory test and forgetting all about it until the next emissions test.  So, in effect, the product as it is being used is cheating and fooling the test.  What about the remaining 7,000, 22,000, or 72,000 miles that the vehicle travels before the next emissions test?  The test has no idea what will happen then, but, if the vehicle failed the test before applying G2P it is almost certainly going to be falling short of these standards after it wears off.

So, people use G2P to cheat the testing/monitoring system put in place by the government, whether or not it was designed for this purpose. Who cares?  I do, and you should, too.  Looking at things from one perspective, if you allow people to blatantly cheat the system and their sponsor to flaunt their cheating product by advertising on your open airwaves, why bother testing at all?  Let's keep every junk-bucket on the road until it won't move anymore.  Air quality is overrated and has very little to do with automobile emissions anyway, and automobile emissions have little if anything to do with respiratory health.  Right?

If you believe this, then you are almost assuredly one of the following (pick one): idiot, jerk.  Actually, describing what I think of you requires stronger language than I want to use in this blog.  Suffice it to say that I think you place the value of your self, life, needs and convenience above those of the other 7 billion people on Earth combined.  If God made the decision of whether a soul went to Heaven or Hell on the fly instead of at the natural end of life your fate would already be decided and you'd be taking an elevator ride down.  There's a reason that the term 'shortcut' is often used with implicit negativity, i.e. there is cost built into shortcuts that makes us think twice before using them.  I guess in your mind if the cost is paid by someone else then that makes it okay.  I call that "the right to make it someone else's responsibility."  That's a rough definition of (lesser) evil, hence the 'going down' prediction above.

If it is not okay for people to cheat the system by taking shortcuts at the expense of others then why don't governments take action?  Shouldn't this product be outlawed?  Why hasn't it been?  I've felt this way for years and naïvely thought that the government would eventually get around to it.  That clearly isn't happening. I guess the only answers come come from this list: too expensive, impractical and apathy.  To these I reply:

1. How can it be too expensive to outlaw/enforce and yet not too expensive to maintain a now flawed testing system?  (I guess they need the sales tax dollars?)
   
2. If it is impractical to outlaw/enforce against the use of this product then why are coloured license plate covers illegal?  You know, the ones that make it harder to impossible for cameras to read the license plates of red-light-runners and toll-road-abusers, not to mention difficult for citizens to be able to identify license plates of vehicles being used in the commission of a crime.  They're against the law, though I see so many of them I wonder how much, or even if, the law is being enforced.  Still, the law discourages at least some people from using them.  The same should be true for G2P, banning it should make it hard enough for people to get it (because retailers are generally law abiding people, or at the very least, afraid of prosecution) that enforcement should be relatively trivial.
   
3. If the government is apathetic toward situations like these, why did they run for office in the first place, and more importantly, why did we vote for them?

So there seems to be three reasons for the government not to act, and I believe I've reduced them all to excuses.  Get off your asses, governments, and do something to protect the air that you breathe.  That's right, it's your lungs that are suffering, too.  If you won't act on the public's behalf, the act in your own self-interest -- politicians are good at that, aren't they?

And to the people at CRC, if you want to continue selling and marketing G2P and do so ethically and morally, either improve the product to last at least a full year or stop pretending you don't know how nearly all your customers use your product.  You obviously know or you would have called the product something less leading like "CRC Emission Reducer", or "CRC Air B Clean", which implies a generic year-round usage as opposed to "G2P" which basically tells the customers to cheat, and how to cheat.  A legal disclaimer is just that, it absolves the issuing entity of legal responsibility but does nothing about waiving moral or ethical responsibility.  I like to call this "Avoid jail, enjoy Hell."

Enjoy Hell, cheaters.  Hope the bucks were worth it.