A very competitive GPS would prevent a fall in Sur do Condado

He Rally Sur to Condado, disputed last weekend, left a spectacular crash involving pilots Manuel Fernández and José Antonio Groba. Both of them escaped unhurt from the collision of their vehicles, which happened in the ninth stage of the competition, when the Peugeot of the first, who was part of the team with Alejandro Cid, tried to pass the Suzuki of the second, whose co-driver was David González. Both cars were badly damaged in the violent impact.

From College of Sports Commissioners, in charge of judging the race, it was decided to hasten an investigation into what had happened. An accident about which there are no clear regulations in the part of sanctions, which only determines the exclusion of participants whose maneuvers endanger the integrity of other competitors. It remains to be seen whether Groba, who rejoined the race after suffering a trip off the track in which he lost a good chunk of the one-minute advantage he had over Fernández at the start, did.

As David Míguez, vice president for Pontevedra, explained in detail, the injured vehicles were not equipped with a GPS system, which is mandatory only in high competition and allows avoiding such situations. The mechanism makes it easy to show the blue flag to those pilots who will pass so that they can facilitate the maneuver before the race resumes.

However, installing it in a car would cost competitors three times as much money as basic GPS, which only allows judges to send a yellow flag signal if there is any danger on the road and detect the car’s position to communicate if it has been stopped for a long time and check that he had not had an accident.

controlled output order

These types of collisions are very rare in rallies as regional regulations state that organizers must take into account each driver’s history and vehicle type to determine the starting order. In this way, a gap of one minute between each should be enough to avoid collisions.