Words are important, and sometimes hard. I say this because the verbiage being used on the thumbnail in this video isn’t correct. This matters, and I’ll explain why. In this video, Alan Reinhart effectively explains the reason why the chutes didn’t come out when John Force had his giant explosion and subsequent crash recently at the Virginia Nationals, and you should watch it to understand what happened. But you should also think about the words on the thumbnail while you do. In the thumbnail they claim that the parachutes failed, but this is not true.

If the lever had been pushed, and the chute cables had been pulled out of the loops that retain them, these chutes would have done exactly what they are supposed to do. There was nothing wrong with the chutes themselves. They were just never deployed. Why they didn’t deploy is pretty straight forward, but why John wasn’t able to deploy them manually is a bit more of a mystery. And we may never have an answer to that one, as we don’t know when his head injury occurred. But what we do know is that the actual chutes and all the components used to deploy them normally, were in place and operational. The emergency system is what failed because of damage to the car as explained below.

I know I’m being picky, but these things matter as racers around the world are already hesitant when it comes to chutes. They are afraid of packing them, don’t understand when to use them, and just don’t do what they should with them a lot of the time. Don’t be those guys.

Video Description:

NHRA’s Alan Reinhart explains why John Force’s parachutes failed to deploy in his recent crash in Richmond, VA. Reinhart, goes into detail on information he received directly from the NHRA Tech Department.