Car plows into spectators at drift racing event in Saga; 4 injured

This was preventable. All the drift events need to take a page out of Formula Drift. All spectators, staff, pit crew and media need to be behind walls or K-rails.

proper safety measures

its a dangerous sport so with dangerous sports, these things happen. you are not forced to attend. imagine putting puritanical rules on jumpsuits or base jumping? if you want to watch safe sports, go to nagoya and watch figure skating. but be careful of catching a cold.

No it's not dangerous, the lack of safety rails the ability of spectators to stand so close make it dangerous. A red cone does not form an invisible barrier. As above there are safety rules used in other countries that would have prevented this, but now it's happened they will bring in standards. It just takes disaster to get things done in Japan.

@cricky. ever watch videos of such events in saudi or UAE? this is an event with 100 spectators and 66 cars! in a parking lot. i don't know how much the olympics cost, maybe 50000 yen per tokyo citizen for safety stuff, but hey, lighten up. these bozuka can do their thing in a private space, away from the public. surely that is more important than on public roads?

its a dangerous sport so with dangerous sports, these things happen. you are not forced to attend. imagine putting puritanical rules on jumpsuits or base jumping? if you want to watch safe sports, go to nagoya and watch figure skating. but be careful of catching a cold.

and in Japan, people don't file lawsuits as much as other countries. These types of events continue without any tweaks because people are less likely to sue and accept things as they are. Think about events such as the Danjiri Festival or Onbashira Festival where people have been dying for many many years.

Yes I watch videos you miss my point. It's one thing to rip it up on a quiet road, quite another to have spectators attend protected by a wall of plastic cones. Once it becomes an event with paying spectators standards are needed particularly when the event involves cars at speed going sideways. I'm getting old and grumpy perhaps I should enter politics.

There is nothing wrong with organizing drift racing event. It's important that there is no safety precautions. In addition, the accident occurred not only because of safety measures didn't do well, there are quality problems of cars. Otherwise, in the drifting competition last year, there would not be a woman died because the car wheels came off.

Comparing jumpsuits and base jumping to drift racing is nonsense. Drift racing is comparably an extremely safe sport for the competitors. For spectators measures are necessary to keep them safe.

Junpei Morinaga, president of the company, said he felt a sense of responsibility and never thought such an accident could occur.

He's either an idiot or a liar.

A car park is not a racing circuit. I have watched drifting at Mobara Circuit in Chiba. It is hard to imagine how one of the cars their could crash into the spectator area. Of course, that is a proper circuit.

Sad news. Hearing this makes me reconsider seeing the Tokyo Drift in Odaiba.

I'm curious whether they thought it might NOT happen with that set up.

Anybody who loves motorsports wants to see a good race or a great demonstration of what we can do with a vehicle. Whether you love racing / drifting or not we all have one thing in common......we came to see the crash. NASCAR, D1, MotoGP, doesn't matter which one. We want to see that EPIC crash! Some people even pay good money for those seats or positions so they can smell the rubber or see an engine burst into flames. If you are going to complain about this event then you need to crack down on Mitsubishi FUSO a lot harder. Wheels just come off their trucks and kill people. They barely paid a dime in Yokohama court.

Redtail.

You are right about that, a musician back home had a hit song about that.

Like 'The Beer tastes better watching a ski wipeout.'

Watching a bunch of cars going in circles is boring till ...

Redtail - do you say that as a spectator or competitor (or competitor's family)? I know most spectators who have no stake in it have that view. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law both race in top tier drift competition in Japan and nothing is better than a decent battle but we really don't want to see the crashes like other spectators do.

 these bozuka can do their thing in a private space, away from the public. surely that is more important than on public roads?

They aren't bosozoku, not even close, it's a different culture altogether!

@Yubaru: Actually it's close, they all come from the same "hooner" roots but have gone their separate ways.