Time Trial Tragedy: After months of questions, our discovery about the airborne barrier
A near-fatal crash at the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival last fall raises questions about the course setup and why a plastic orange barrier went flying into the air, directly into a course worker. For four months, we've been asking those questions. When we couldn't get answers, we turned to public records requests.
In part two of our investigative series, we explore what happened to cause the driver of the antique car to crash and what we discovered about the barrier that started it all.
Watch part one of our special report below:
Pictures show just a snapshot of Jeff Banker's 30 year career on a race track. "I absolutely love being an official," Jeff Banker told Newschannel 9's Latricia Thomas from his hometown of Atlanta.
From the edge of the course, he let drivers know about any hazards ahead. "I was basically a safety worker, a corner worker," Jeff explains.
But Jeff and his attorney say it was a planned part of the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival course that proved to be the most dangerous hazard for Jeff that October day.
Watch as the race car slams into the orange plastic barrier, taking out Jeff and a second corner worker.
Starting the day of the accident, we asked race organizers time after time IF the barriers were filled with water. For months we received no answer. We got our hands on this incident report from the Chattanooga police which says mechanical issues caused the 1969 Lola replica to hit the 6-foot barrier. In it, confirmation that those barriers were NOT filled with water.
Spec sheets for the barricade say it's "well-fortified when filled with water or sand"... but empty it weighs just 100 pounds. "The barrier went airborne, the barrier wasn't filled with water, it wasn't weighted," says Jeff's attorney Derek Hays.
Jeff remembers nothing about the moment he got hurt. His memory kicks back in days later in the hospital. "I opened my eyes and said 'Where am I? What is going on?'"
But one person who DOES remember: the driver behind the wheel of the Lola that day. His description is part of the the Chattanooga police department investigative file.
"I felt the steering do that," he tells police on body camera footage. "Once it did that, it wouldn't turn back."
Dennis Olthoff says even he was surprised when that barrier flew "30 feet in the air." "I can't believe it moved that barrier like that," he told police.
We spent months reaching out to experts, looking for concrete guidance on the safest way to use these barriers around cars going at a high rate of speed but could only find guidelines for work zones.
We tracked the barricade through four different companies to locate the manufacturer, Armorcast. Over the phone, their Sales Manager Sevan Ghazourian told us, "this is an example of our product being improperly used... It's meant to be used on construction sites."
Jeff says he lives with the consequences of that decision every day. "It's been extremely painful," he says while sitting next to his wife Sammye who helps take care of Jeff.
And those pictures he has to remember his three decades of racing? They've been replaced with the pictures his attorney is gathering, as he plans to try and hold someone accountable in court.
So, whose job was it to keep it from happening? Derek Hays says he's still pinpointing WHO the lawsuit he plans to file will name. And we finally did get a statement from the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival after we told them we got that crash video. It says they regret what happened to Jeff.
They also say "The marker that was hit following an unusual mechanical failure was intended for directional purposes only and therefore was not weighted. Out of an abundance of caution, the festival took immediate action following the incident to remove similar markers."
Their full statement reads...
We sincerely regret the incident that occurred on the time trials course last month and are glad both volunteers who were injured are recovering after receiving care at Erlanger.
The location where the incident occurred was designated for festival officials only and concrete barricades, six-foot fences, and hay bales were in place along the course for public safety purposes. At no time were spectators in danger. The marker that was hit following an unusual mechanical failure was intended for directional purposes only and therefore was not weighted. Out of an abundance of caution, the festival took immediate action following the incident to remove similar markers and will take every precaution necessary to ensure such an incident does not occur again, including reviewing alternative directional markers for future events.
Next week, in part three of our investigative series, we dig into who was tasked with making sure the course was safe, the changes the city of Chattanooga is making in how they regulate these events, and why they are the only government agency even looking in to what happened.
